Books you must read

The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad

Author:Twinkle Khanna 

The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad is a collection of four short stories with women and their basic needs playing a pivotal role in each story. 

This book has four stories and i'll go one by one:

The first story 'The Legend Of Lakshmi Prasad', is about Lakshmi who single handedly transforms her village and women folk in it. It deals with the most common issue of our country that is the birth of a girl child. When Lakshmi's sister comes back home from her marital home, Lakshmi realizes the pain that the parents of girl child has to go through. She sets to solve all their problems and does so successfully. While the story is predictable it does leave you with a smile in end.

The second story is 'Salaam Noni Appa'. When a 68 year old Noni Appa falls in love with her married yoga teacher, she refuses to accept it first thinking about the usual 'log kya kahenge?'. When tragedy strikes and she sees the love Anandji has for her, she slowly warms up to the feeling of love. Binni her sister, also a widow, stays with her and forms a perfect third angle to the story.

'If the Weather Permits' is the third story. This is about Elisa Thomas and her five husband's. Everytime, she gets married for her parents and is back home before her parents have settled the expenses of her wedding. The man she marries are weird. While one wants to kill himself,  other wants to kill herself and than himself.

'The Sanitary Man From A Sacred Land' is the story of Arunachalam Muruganantham or the man who is famously kniwn as the man who wore sanitary pad. The author has tried to fictonalize his story and gives us Bablu Kewat who wants to make the life of his wife and other women easier. When he purchases a pack of sanitary pads for his wife, he is shocked at the amount. He than sets out to build a machine that churns out sanitary pads at less than half the cost of what is available in the market. His wife, mother and sister do not understand his obsession with sanitary pads and soon moves away from him. Bablu remains undeterred and sets out to build the machine and implement in many villages. This is a brave story and something that deserves to be told.