An Educated Woman In Prostitution

'But now, having travelled to the frontier of the world of sins, I no longer hesitated in trampling over the remnants of the goodness in my heart.'Manada, Maani didi, Feroza Bibi, Miss Mukherjee – the jostling identities of our beguiling and charming protagonist as she glides through a life that can be seen as exploitative yet, also, curiously, empowering and honest. Manada's fascinating life story takes her from her wealthy cossetted upbringing to a life of debauchery and prostitution after she elopes with her married lover when in her mid-teens.The trials and tribulations of her life unfold in a manner that is often self-loathing and critical of "fallen" women but the reader does wonder if that isn't just a lip-service the narrator in her is paying to a society that doesn't understand women like her. She is capable, attractive and doesn't ask for pity as she struggles with illness, poverty and abandonment, but ensures that she emerges relatively unscathed and...