Indian Author Pens Housewives’ Challenges In Maintaining Traditions In Multicultural Singapore

Sengupta, who hails from Kolkata, and has lived in Singapore for over 13 years, said it took her three years to pen her latest offering.

An Indian author's chronicles of the daily chores and struggles of Indian housewives to stay in touch with their culture and heritage despite being a minority community in the cosmopolitan, affluent city-state of Singapore, forms the premise of her new book.

Singapore-based Nilanjana Sengupta's "Chickpeas to Cook and Other Stories" looks at women of the tribe – often leading difficult lives, caught between family traditions in a fast-changing modern world.

“It is actually about some of the smallest communities of Singapore, sometimes no more than just a few hundred families,” Sengupta says during her book launch here on Saturday.

“The (book's) focus is on the Sikhs, the Parsis, the Bohris, the Buddhist-Burmese communities that put up a brave struggle every day to stay in touch with their culture, communities which we might lose if we are not careful about our heritage,” the author and researcher associated with the National University of Singapore, said.

Sengupta, who hails from Kolkata, and has lived in Singapore for over 13 years, said it took her three years to pen her latest offering.

“This took me three years – for the research and interviews and writing. Actually, the book has been on my mind ever since I noticed the world taking an ugly turn towards fundamentalism and fanatic thought," Sengupta explains.

"So, here very intentionally, I delve into the multi-religious, multicultural patina of Singapore," she notes.

Sengupta's other titles include "A Gentleman’s Word: The Legacy of Subhas Chandra Bose in Southeast Asia". 

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