Status? Single...

After the mind boggling success of her erotic novel Sita’s Curse, feisty and forthright, Sreemoyee Kundu is back with another hard-hitting book, titled, Status Single. A frank chat with the author…

- Sandeep Hattangadi

The journalist turned PR professional turned author, Sreemoyee Kundu made her literary debut with Faraway Music in 2013. Her second book, Sita’s Curse, being an erotic fiction, broke several barriers when it came to women’s literature. Little surprise then that it became a national bestseller. The prolific writer’s third novel published last year, You’ve Got The Wrong Girl, once again broke new ground as a woman writer in India foraying into the realm of lad-lit made famous internationally by writers like Nick Hornby and Matt Dunn.

Sreemoyee’s first non fiction book on single women in India, titled, Status Single, has been published by Amaryllis. A proud feminist, and having been raised by a single and young widowed mother, Sreemoyee says she has personally grown up with a lot of stigmatisation and marginalisation. She saw her mother being kept away cruelly from marriage ceremonies and baby naming rituals as it was whispered that she would bring bad luck. She grew up living under the shadow of being a ‘fatherless’, child, besides having a nanny who was a child widow and was married at the age of eight to a man decades older who left her widowed by the age of 18. She also fostered her house-help’s daughter, who was abandoned at the age of five.