Publisher: Penguin India
Pages: 272
Available on www.amazon.com

A first novel by T.S.Tirumurti, Clive Avenue is a book based in Madras. Tirimurti is the nephew of R.K Narayan, and is Counsellor at the Indian Embassy in Washington DC. On a recent visit to India, a close friend of mine recommended this book and after reading it I can’t help but wonder why this book did not receive more attention.

Clive Avenue, is home to the Sundarams -- a conservative Iyer family, the Leonards – a French family, Rajaram -- an IAS officer and his wife and Selvan – a Tamil movie star. Rajan Sundaram, the twenty-five year old son of Dr.Sundaram and Lakshmi, returns to Madras after an MBA from Wharton. While he plans on taking a break and enjoying life for a while, his parents get busy trying to find the right “TamBram Iyer” girl for him. Everyone starting with his Paati (grandmother) is worried about just one thing, which is getting him married soon.

Rajan himself is eager to catch with up with his childhood friends, his French neighbor Dominique in particular. Rajan and Dominique are good friends and can talk easily about everything, including what kind of girl Rajan should marry. Rajan is coaxed by his parents and his Paati to ‘meet’ Gayathri, an eligible TamBram girl from a good family. Rajan meets and actually likes Gayathri who turns out to be a not-so-typical TamBram girl after all. It is Rajan who gets hit with culture shock when he discovers that Gayathri, the good Brahmin girl actually is a meat-eating, cigarette-smoking, disco-loving girl. Rajan and Gayathri are soon engaged and the wedding preparations are in full swing, when out of the blue, Rajan gets stabbed. Rajan and Gayathri break up, Dominique and her Parisian fiancé break up and Paati has some good, non-traditional ideas to share with Rajan’s parents. Paati’s character is very well developed and definitely portrays her as a strong woman who can take radical decisions in times of need. Through Paati, Tirumurti has given importance to the role of women in an Indian household.

The novel is well written in a simple, easy-to-read style and brought back a lot of memories of Madras. The friend, who recommended this book, took me to a high-end boutique a few days later and when I met the gorgeous half European, half Indian woman who owned the store, I did a bit of sleuthing and couldn’t help but wonder if Dominique is purely a figment of the authors imagination!

I highly recommend reading this book.

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