Love blossoms over marzipan and hot coffee in these excerpts from US-based Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's latest novel, One Amazing Thing.
It is an early spring day in 1962 in Calcutta and Jiang, twenty-five years old, stands in the doorway of her father's shoe store inside New Market, under the sign that reads Feng's fine footwear.
She is proud of the sign, of which she is the author. That sign had led to some heated arguments, her grandmother claiming that such an arrogant declaration would attract bad luck.
Look at the other Chinese businesses with their noncommittal nomenclatures: Lucky Orchid, Jade Mountain, Flying Dragon. None of them draw attention to their family name by blazoning it over their storefront. But her father had taken Jiang's side, the way he had ever since her mother had died when Jiang was five, leading her grandmother to lament that he was nothing but a soggy noodle in his daughter's hands.
Full report here India Today
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