Oil of Vitriol in the Marital Bed

Abstract

This is no family thriller, what comes in the forthcoming passages is a lesson in chemistry. At least that must have been the intention of the author, novelist Anita Nair. Ladies Coupé, somewhere between a novel and a string of short stories, is set in India. In earlier times, special coupés were reserved in the carriages of the Indian railways for ladies travelling several days. Six women in such a coupé, spending together the time of a long journey, talk about their lives. It seems that the fate of an Indian woman is neither easy nor pleasant, even if she is well-to-do and has been born in a higher caste, not even around the end of the twentieth century.