Manreet Sodhi Someshwar

Manreet Sodhi Someshwar is an award-winning writer (Commonwealth Broadcasting Association, RTHK); her articles have been carried by the IHT, Time Asia and other papers; and she does regular book reviews for the SCMP. An engineer and a Management graduate from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIMC), she was the first woman recruited into the Sales function of HLL (Unilever India) after a hiatus of twenty-odd years. Earning the Laundry Stripes is inspired by those barmy days of travelling atop detergent bags and selling soap in the 45-degree heat of upcountry India!

Bibliography



The Long Walk Home
Harper Collins, New Delhi (2009)

Seventy-one-year-old Baksh wakes up one night in pain and ventures out in search of a doctor. In the time it takes him to reach a hospital, his heart irretrievably damaged, he travels down memory lane, reliving his life lived in the border town of Ferozepur, Punjab—from pre-Partition India, to the holocaust that accompanied independence, the Indo-Pak wars, the Green Revolution and the rise of religious extremism. Increasingly isolated in the terror-infested eighties, an era of curfews, encounters and hit lists, his world all but falls apart as his wife falls under the spell of a rabid preacher; his best friend, a Hindu, flees the town; the Bar Council where he works cleaves along religious lines; and he himself makes an error of judgement that could have serious security ramifications. As he nears the end of his walk, and his life, he wonders: will there ever be a redemption, a homecoming?

Walk the dateline Article in the Hindu, 13 May 2009.

Literary star on the horizon. Khushwant Singh in the Tribune.

Earning the Laundry Stripes
Rupa, New Delhi. (2006)

Marked by the zeitgeist of a changing India the largest Consumer products company in the country, HLL, decides to recruit, for the first time, women Area Sales Managers. Enter Noor Bhalla. A woman and a Sikh, finds she is in a minority as she is welcomed to the S&M world of Sales (Sectarian & Macho). One routine morning Noor is molested by a roadside Romeo - she delivers him a sound walloping. Days later, a twilight knock, a mosutache-twirling constable More, a possible Jail sentence - the eve teaser, he informs, is critically ill in hospital. As she struggles to successfully accomplish a year of training that takes her across India, she attempts to outsmart the increaingly avaricious More. Finally, Noor has only one card left to play - it could deliver her, or do her in. So, go forth on the journey, seated atop detergent bags under a 45-degree sun, into the heart of contemporary and corporate India as Noor discovers the regulation life jacket does not fit and she must devise her own ways to survive.

Sales adventures in Jhumritalaiya. Review in DNA sunday.

Of stripes earned. Review in the Deccan Herald.

South Asian Women authors
Sawnet Bookshelf
Sawnet