The Red Carpet By Lavanya Sankaran

Set in Bangalore, Lavanya Sankaran's short stories describe a city in transition - a place where software billionaires collide with beggars, and the Americanised youth challenge the old social order. In the collection's most memorable story, "Bombay This", Ramu, a 30-year-old IT expert, hires his mother as a matchmaker, but finds himself increasingly drawn to a giddy Bombay woman whose modern ways his mother can't stomach. Sankaran is finely attuned to the nuances of material desire and emotional need. Her easy-going prose manages to be both disarming and discerning.