At the Cusp of Ages is a story of women at a crossroads—where millennia meet and disperse. It is a story of women—abject, intimidated, absurd and betrayed. It is also about women who refuse to accept male domination as an inevitable way of life. It is about the fragility of our 'secular' fabric, about how at times of crisis even those we believe we love are suddenly suspect in our eyes.
In this often disturbing novel that nevertheless ends on a note of some hope, three generations of women express their inmost thoughts to the reader. The first is Meenakshi who stoically, even shamelessly, accepts the infidelity of her husband and her son. The next generation is represented by Carla who constantly seeks to submerge her Europeanness in her growing Indianness, until one day she walks away.
Gayatri, Shakeela and Valli, caught in political and personal maelstroms, struggle to find their identities in a mindless society that treats them as worse than pawns. They find strength in friendship and the hope, however timid, that love can blossom again. Vaasanthi probes our psyches with ferocious honesty and delicate understanding.
