A book about being a teenager in Pakistan and India. Through letters
we follow the lives of four girls, two wealthy and two poor, two
Pakistani and two Indian. Two who know exactly what their future holds
and two who are convinced that they will never measure up.
Last night there was a snowstorm that made my window disappear. I woke
up gasping at the heater. This is my first letter in three years. First
letter since I left Pakistan. First letter since Nusrat.
Tanya Tania is a story about two young women coming of age in two
countries that are coming of age. Tanya Talati in Karachi and Tania
Ghosh in Bombay, daughters of college best friends, write to each other
of what cannot be said to anyone else: a mother who has gone from quiet
to silent, sex that has become a weapon, a servant with unforgettably
soft hands and a country beginning to play with religion. When Tanya's
brother receives a kidnapping threat, she sets in motion what no one
could have predicted, least of all Tania, who finds herself alone in a
forbidden bazaar in Bombay, listening to the sounds of a riot torn city
coming closer and closer and closer . . .
Written in letters that span six years, Tanya Tania is a story of what
it means to be between childhood and adulthood at a time when two
countries are struggling with what it means to be Indian and Pakistani,
rich and poor, confident and lonely. A story of love between girls,
between families and between countries, Tanya Tania, is, at its heart,
a love story about what it means to be human.
