Trendy new fiction for the trendy new Indian woman

NEW DELHI - Indian bookstores these days are stocking up on a new kind of English-language novel -- the kind in which twentysomething urban women put their careers first, ridicule arranged marriages and wrestle with weight gain.

The internationally trendy fiction genre known as "chick lit," popularized by "Bridget Jones's Diary" and "Sex and the City," now has an Indian avatar.

In a country where marriages are usually arranged by parents in consultation with astrologers, and where women are traditionally expected to sacrifice their own aspirations in the interest of family, the cheeky chick-lit heroines are being embraced by readers who see the lighter side of Indian mores.

The plots reveal Indian city-dwellers confronting the amusing vagaries of daily life -- a working woman puts her family astrologer's number on speed dial on her cell phone; another woman dumps trash on a boy her mother sends for an arranged marriage; a couple's romance blossoms through a series of Post-it notes stuck on a car in a parking lot; a mother bemoans her bad karma because her 29-year-old daughter is still single.

Indian chick lit is the latest, most irreverent entrant into the world of English-language fiction here. But publishers and critics say it is also a reflection of the growing confidence among Indian women.

"This is the story of the new Indian woman in the cities. She is single, has a career and is willing to have fun, take risks and find a man her way, and not necessarily her family's way. It is a woman we have only read about in books from the Western countries and now, suddenly we are finding her on Indian roads," said V. K. Karthika, publisher and chief editor at Harper Collins India, which published "Almost Single" by debutante writer Advaita Kala. The book has sold 10,000 copies in the past four months and is now in its fourth printing.

The heroines of chick lit skillfully balance cultural traditions with 21st-century lifestyles, trying to observe fasting rituals while adhering to a diet, choosing to hang out with gay friends or facing a mother's disapproval.

"We have the baggage of culture imposed on us. We have to be a good daughter, be chaste, marry at the right age, be a good wife and a good daughter-in-law. But all we want is to have fun like everybody else," said Jyoti Trehan, 25, an advertising executive.