Breaking Out: An Indian Woman’s Hardcover – 28 April 2012

Key Features Explores the differences between Indian and American society andculture, especially with regard to women. A story full of hope about how the author was able to remake her life after mistakes and tragedies in her youth. Author is a famous economist at Columbia University, in America, and has been awarded the Padma Bhushan About the Book: Breaking Out: An Indian Woman’s American Journey An Honest and beautifully written memoir that tells acompelling and thought-provoking human story. Padma Desai grew up in the 1930s in the provincial world of Surat, whereshe had a sheltered and strict upbringing in a traditional Gujarati AnavilBrahmin family. Her academic brilliance won her a scholarship to BombayUniversity, where the first heady taste of freedom in the big city led totragic consequences-seduction by a fellow student whom she was thencompelled to marry. In a failed attempt to end this disastrous first marriage,she converted to Christianity. A scholarship to America in 1955 launched her on her long journey toliberation from the burdens and constraints of her life in India, with agrowing self-awareness and transformation at many levels, as she madea new life for herself, met and married the celebrated economist JagdishBhagwati, became a mother, and rose to academic eminence at Harvardand Columbia. How did she navigate the tumultuous road to assimilation in Americansociety and culture? And what did she retain of her Indian upbringing inthe process? This brave and moving memoir, written with a novelist’s skillat evoking personalities, places and atmosphere, and a scholar’s insightsinto culture and society, community and family. About the Author: Padma Desai Padma Desai is the Gladys and Roland Harriman Professor ofComparative Economic Systems and director of the Center for TransitionEconomies at Columbia University, New York.

About the Author