Chickpeas to Cook and Other Stories

Abstract

In her latest book, Chickpeas to Cook and Other Stories, critically acclaimed Singapore-based Indian writer Nilanjana Sengupta takes us beyond the traditional images of Singapore as a vibrant metropolis and wealthy financial hub to a more sensitive, compassionate and humane domain: to the brighter side of Singapore. In it, she explores the religious and spiritual experiences of Singapore’s often overlooked and marginalised minority women from the smallest of the small communities within its eight sacred folds. The author proffers that underneath its sterile rationalism and soul-destroying industrialism, Singapore shares an animating principle, a law of the heart, which brings clarity, vibrancy and naturalness to many of its residents and fullness to the nation. The book is Sengupta’s creative attempt to, rephrasing Ralph Waldo Emerson, hitch Singapore’s “wagon” to the “star” and show the soul’s constructive role in the scheme of the nation’s Whole.