New Delhi, July 22: Sohana Badshah is a carefree rich “Bombay girl”, who moves to London to study interior designing. She falls in love with Jagdish Sachdev, a man of refined intellect. The dream match falls apart, with Jagdish blaming bad blood between the families.

Sohana returns home to discover Mumbai is full of her kind - girls with dyed brown tresses, plucked eyebrows, personalities scrubbed of distinct identities and fortunes to fall back on. She is unsure of her position in the family sweepstakes which pit her against her brother in an inheritance war.

Welcome to Bombay Girl (Harper-Collins India) by Los Angeles-based journalist-turned novelist Kavita Daswani’s new trilogy about a tale of new India that straddles several continents. It’s one of the new crossover novels that are making globalized lifestyle statements with live-in relationships and heartaches.

Daswani, a former fashion editor of the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, may not be household name on Indian bookshelves but she has made the smart Indian heroine a bestseller in the West and Southeast Asia with her previous books, For Matrimonial Purposes, Salaam, Paris, The Village Bride of Beverly Hills (Everything Happens For a Reason), Indie Girl and Lovetorn.

Daswani writes about the communities in the Indian diaspora and how they fit into the traditional institutions of marriage, families and the opportunities for women. She captures the clash of cultures between East and West - and the change.

Why Mumbai Daswani says she set her story in Mumbai “because it is the only city in India I am most familiar with, connected with”. “My acquaintance with the city began as a child during a family wedding. I used to visit the city as a child,” the writer, who grew up in Hong Kong, said. Daswani began her career as a journalist at 17.

She spoke “to people and read a lot of magazines”.

The women have changed in Mumbai, Daswani said. Daswani explores the idea of marriage, migration and freedom - in all six of her books featuring Indian women with diverging outlooks to life. (IANS)