Gita Aravamudan started her journalistic career at Hindustan Times, New Delhi, at a time when there were very few women in journalism. She has also worked with and written for Indian Express, India Today, Sunday, Filmfare, Femina, Illustrated Weekly and Sunday MidDay.Her books include non-fiction (Voices in My Blood, Disappearing Daughters and Women Unbound) as well as fiction narratives (The Healing). She is also slated to do a book on surrogacy with HarperCollins India.
A novel that spans several generations and seven tumultuous decades, The Healing is remarkable for the disarming simplicity with which it signposts the changing ways of contemporary India. The Babri masjid falls on the day Ramanujam, patriarch and freedom fighter, is rushed into hospital after suffering a cardiac arrest. As his wife and family stand vigil by his bedside, a second demolition is waiting to throw their lives out of gear- Shanti Nivas, the sprawling family property they have lived in for over seventy years, is to be transformed into modern apartments where all the members of the family find individual homes and possibly, an entirely different way of life. Told from the perspective of Ramanujam's younger daughter Bharati, this evocative novel set in Chennai maps the memories of Shanti Nivas and its residents. Past loves and unresolved conflicts war with the reality of present-day relationships as Bharati and her husband Krishna confront their old nemesis, doctor and sometime friend Manohar. The situation is further complicated when their older daughter Jayanti declares her intention to marry a colleague- a man who is not part of their community, or caste, or even religion.
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