Customer Reviews

Shielding Her Modesty

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Rebeccasreads highly recommends SHIELDING HER MODESTY as a collection of intricate & engrossing stories about the clash of cultures between India & America, sometimes heartbreaking & sometimes hilarious.

Muruga is a billboard painter who can't read yet ponders the influences of painting luscious American women whose "intimate parts" he feels he must keep covered from the leers & jeers of the oglers far below on the street.

Kaveri used to be an artist, back in Tanjavur. Six months ago, she'd told her mother she'd only marry a man with a PhD. Her aunt found one, in America. He comes to India, courts her & takes her back to Ann Arbor, Michigan where she tries to be a good wife, except Keshav doesn't want an Indian wife, nor Indian food, nor his apartment run the Indian way.

Raksha's in a panic because her parents are coming all the way from Madras for her graduation in Wisconsin... except... she's had a live-in boyfriend & must now get rid of every telltale thing. Upon arrival her parents are confused about her lifestyle -- what is pizza? & how life is lived in an American college, & Raksha just can't seem to do anything right...

The one I loved is The Bharati Doll -- young Parvati's older brother, Gopi, works in a toy factory. She yearns for one little pink shoe from the dolls he makes. Here the names of the dolls in America & in India vividly illuminates the chasm between cultures.

Very well done!

Shielding Her Modesty contains a collection of short stories about modern life for various Indian men and women both in India and America or somewhere in between. Some are sad, some lighthearted. It is a short book, only 135 pages, but each page counts. Each little gem of a story gives special insight into the characters lives.

My favorite story told the tale of a young man, living in America, who bought a ridiculously expensive engagement ring to take back to his, not yet known, bride in India. Ofcourse things don't go as planned for him...

When I finished, I wanted more. I would love to read a full length novel by this new author. I highly recommend this book.

This collection of stories was a joy to read. I found myself reading one story and cherishing it for a day before returning to the next. The characters are lush and real, leaving the reader with an intimate feel of the mix of emotions and desires that the stirring of cultures and traditions bring.

The stories go well beyond being about cultural clashes. While the reader gains a deeper feel for cultural differences and the conflicts felt by the characters, the stories stand on their on as well written fiction. I look forward to Ms. Bhaskar's next writing venture.

Sita Bhaskar's writing style is quite captivating. The stories in "Shielding Her Modesty" are quite varied, spanning over life in India and the United states with the tones and themes varying from very light and comic to somber and heartbreaking. The stories I found most touching are "Your self storage" and "An umbrella over the grave". Both deal with loss; one the loss of hope and trust and another the loss of a child. The hurt, the grief and the loneliness are depicted with considerable skill in both stories. Sita uses great sensitivity and subtlety in laying open a wounded heart and winning the complete empathy of the reader. I am very much looking forward to more works from Sita Bhaskar and hope they will not be long in coming.

I had the privilege of reading, and offering suggestions and edits for, the stories in "Shielding Her Modesty" prior to the book's publication. As a result of that experience, I became a huge fan of Sita Bhaskar's writing style and story-telling skills. Sita has the uncanny knack of writing about ordinary people, many of whom found themselves straddling two very different cultures, in a highly readable fashion. Her stories that take place in India provide the reader with an intriguing and insightful picture of everyday life on Indian streets and in the homes of the Indian people. Sita's writing style is extremely engaging, drawing the reader into each story, helping the reader become familiar with the individual characters, educating the reader about the Indian way of life in the process, and at the same time telling their fascinating tales. Without the slightest hesitation, I recommend "Shielding Her Modesty" as a "must read" for all.

"Shielding Her Modesty" and Other Stories, by Sita Bhaskar. Frog Books. March 2006.
An Indian long resident in the US, Sita Bhaskar focuses on the vexed interface between two cultures. Her stories are readable as transparent, light-handed plots exquisitely composed either to provide grounds for pity, laughter, condescension, or bewilderment-most often in medleys; or to explore a master idea (such as alienation); or to dissect the "when in Rome" commonplace. Their most compelling profile, however, is materialistic. Bhaskar's narrators speak for no one-self, the Indian community or the American, higher authority, or a disciplinary consensus, though she is versed in anthropology as well as the poetics of comedy. What is really real to Bhaskar is a latent dynamic of temperament, culture, class, and gender; everything else is outward manifestation, invariably engaging but always pointing beyond and below. The method of Shielding Her Modesty and Other Stories is classically logistical: conflicts and classifications as well as syntheses (fated to fail) are governed by rigorous laws of antecedent and consequent, causal or associative. Finally, the texts are elemental: similar (but far from identical) characters act and react in analogous ways to cognate situations; the resulting array of tightly integrated patterns creates a dystopia of in-betweenness. Enthusiastic viewers of Bend it like Beckham and The Monsoon Wedding will revel in Bhaskar's wit, finesse, and empathy.