Capital Capers

It isn’t just sex,lies and parties in Miss India 2005 contestant-turned-investment banker-turned-author Ira Trivedi’s new book The Great Indian Love Story. There are also Ferraris,single malts,nightclubs and Delhi stereotypes who inhabit this world — the coke-snorting son of a rich industrialist,the young politician,the gay designer. Between the sheets unfold the stories of two women,the US returned Serena Sharma and her mother Parmeet— showing “how Delhi has changed dramatically over the period of just one generation”.

“Fifteen years ago,Delhi was slow and lazy and Gymkhana Club was where families hung out. There weren’t so many nightclubs. Today,people wear short,tight dresses but under this veneer,they are as traditional as before,even narrow-minded,” says Trivedi,24,whose second book comes four years after her debut What Would You Do to Save The World? The protagonist Serena always falls for the wrong men while her mother Parmeet looks for passion outside marriage with tragic consequences.

“A lot of the stories are based on real incidents,though I have focused on personality types rather than specific people. While my first book was a chick-lit,this one is for young adults. I’ve kept the writing breezy and chatty,” explains Trivedi about the 180-pager. An MBA from Columbia Business School,she began working on the book two years ago and “sometime in January 2009,I decided to quit my work at JP Morgan to write full time”.

She reads heavyweights like Ernest Hemingway and Toni Morrison but will never write cerebral books. “Who reads tomes any more?” she asks. She’s ready with her next book,The Intern,which takes place in the familiar world of investment banking and Wall Street and will be out in 2010.