Hi Shoba, it looks like this Q&A will run online in February, but we received a sneak peek of a wonderful print review of your book from BookPage’s February issue.
“It’s true that at first I laughed at drinking cow urine but feed me a good story and I can believe anything,” writes author Shoba Narayan. Indeed, she feeds readers a good story in her udderlydelightful The Milk Lady of Bangalore.
When Narayan, her husband and their two daughters moved from New York City back to the couple’s native India, Narayan was no doubt looking for something to write about. She found it right in the elevator of her new apartment building: a cow riding up to the third floor for a housewarming ceremony, led by its owner, Sarala, a woman who sold raw milk. Hindus consider cows sacred, and India has what Narayan calls a “cow obsession.” Soon this obsession rubs off on her, turning her into “an evangelist for fresh cow’s milk.”
Sarala led the author straight into a herd of often funny and always fascinating bovine adventures, including drinking cow urine (supposedly a curative), mixing a cow dung-yogurt concoction as fertilizer, falling in love with a red cow with “eyes the size of oval macaroons” and even briefly owning a cow before donating it to Sarala.
There’s plenty of heart and soul in this book as Narayan takes readers on a unique tour of her Indian neighborhood, where there’s never a dull moment. Narayan is an astute observer, particularly of herself, noting: “The reason I want to buy milk from a cow is because I am trying to recapture the simple times of my childhood, particularly after the intricate dance that I have undertaken for the last twenty years as an immigrant in America. Milk is my way of reconnecting with the patch of earth that I call home.” —ALICE CARY
Visit BookPage.com to reada Q&A with Shoba Narayan.
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