BREAKING GROUND

Great book and highly recommended. India's post-Independence Nehruvian era sparked previously unheard-of hopes and expectations, especially among the educated classes. Rami Chhabra established herself as a pioneering "woman" journalist by starting her career in the historic 1950s and 1960s after growing up during those eerie years. The book, which she refers to as her "professional memoir," delves deeply into a positive life view that evolved as the times changed, especially in the final two decades of globalisation, into a complicated web of disappointments, bewilderments, and fought struggles. The book offers a rare view into the "other" aspects of nation-building. It is fascinating and passionately narrated, with minute details of events shedding light on the fight for women's equality and public service communication space, in particular the intersection with sexuality.