Off the Beaten Track

Saeeda Bano was the first woman in India to work as a radio newsreader known then and still as the doyenne of Urdu broadcasting. Over her unconventional and courageous life she walked out of a suffocating marriage witnessed the violence of Partition lost her son for a night in a refugee camp ate toast with Nehru and fell in love with a married man who would in the course of their twenty-five-year relationship become the Mayor of Delhi. Though she was born into privilege in Bhopal-the only Indian state to be ruled by women for four successive generations-her determination independence and frankness make this a remarkable memoir and a crucial disruption in India's understanding of her own past.