Beneath the Veneer

ABOUT THE BOOK

The newly sprouted town of Rangvihar has lured people with the promise of a safe haven, away from Delhi’s maddening din. But beneath its swanky veneer lurks a hidden evil that is devouring the town’s safety.

Six women with troubled pasts – Falguni, Kesri, Gunjan, Asha, Farzeen, and Rani, drawn to the town with the hope of starting their lives afresh, befriend one another to form a safety net. They discover the sinister side of Rangvihar as Falguni’s teenage daughter goes missing. It soon becomes evident that the disappearance is connected to a nefarious human trafficking racket in the town. The plot further thickens with more disappearances and the eventual death of suspects. As the layers of mystery peel off, all six find themselves embroiled in the crisis in unexpected ways.

Pushed to seek a way out of it, what secrets will they unearth about the town as well as each other? Will they be able to re-establish the golden equilibrium of peace and safety they had once come in search of?
How heavy a price do they have to pay to protect themselves?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sreya Sarkar is a public policy analyst, journalist, and author. She did her undergraduate studies in Political Science at Kolkata’s Presidency College and post-graduation from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. After a short stint in The Times of India and as a college lecturer in Kolkata, she set off to the US for her second Master’s in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. She worked in public policy research and advocacy in U.S. think tanks and non-profits such as Cascade Policy Institute and Heartland Institute before turning into a freelance writer with her fingers dipped in multiple fiction and non-fiction projects.

She contributes political and social articles for Indian and U.S. news magazines like The Wire, Scroll, Karvaan India, and American Kahani. She writes columns on Indian American issues for The Quint and Dainik Bhaskar. Her short stories have been published in Indian literary magazines including Indian Ruminations, Indus Women Writing, and The Space Ink.

Sreya is a keen observer of Indian politics and speaks in political and social talk shows and seminars organized by universities and think tanks such as the Observer Research Foundation, Center for Adivasi Research and Development, and Ambedkar Center for Social and Cultural Studies.

Originally hailing from Kolkata, she spent her childhood in a civil service family surrounded by voracious readers and fervent political discussions, Sreya nurtured a wish to write from an early age. Sreya currently lives in Sudbury, Massachusetts with her spouse and teenage son, and when she is not writing you will find her in the kitchen cooking up a spicy curry to fight New England’s icy winters. She enjoys recreating traditional Bengali delicacies using locally grown vegetables and inviting friends over for hearty meals.