Excerpt from Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The decision wasn't a symbolic one. She'd bought a black Mysore silk sari on University Avenue on a whim one day. Also on a whim, she'd had the sari blouse stitched in the provocative new cut, held together by nothing more than a thin ribbon tied across her back. She wanted to surprise her husband, so she tied the blouse herself, guided by the bony hills of her scapulae. Eight yards of silk, woven with silver thread. At the end hung a swathe embroidered with banyan trees and antlered deer. She straightened the pleats that cascaded from her hips to her ankles, climbed tidily over her chest and down her back. She clipped on a pair of heavy silver earrings that spilled down to her shoulders and matched her silver choker. Her feet, she slipped into silver stiletto heels.

Rishi looked up when she emerged from the bedroom. He was striking in a blue silk kurta. "You're wearing black," he said.

"It's classy," she answered.

He crossed his arms, then walked over and kissed the junction of her neck and shoulder.



The sun beat down as they drove. Coastal waters gave way to outlet malls and farmland. It was warm, even for July. Kavya was getting over-warm, but when she turned the AC dial, nothing happened. "What's going on?"

"Push it in."

"I did."

Rishi shrugged. "Open a window then. It's better for you." It's what they did in Berkeley, where the air was crisp enough most days. But Kavya knew well this strain of windshield glare. An open window would bring nothing more than a blast of sick heat. She spun the knob, jiggled it, pounded at it. She was sweating now, her upper lip itching and beaded in sweat. She grunted at Rishi, who seemed to have no intention of helping.

"Sorry?" He sent her a sidelong glance, a wan smile. He glowed in the heat, the way a woman should, his face a collection of plains and fine ridges. He placed a hand on her knee as he drove, which he seemed to think would disarm her. In the old days, Rishi would have pulled over and inspected the air conditioning himself. He would have pulled out the manufacturer's manual or even re-set their route to take them through more temperate territory. Those were the days when they'd first met, undergrads at UC Berkeley, when Rishi would make his daily appearance in the student cafe where Kavya was barista. He'd spend too long at the counter, ignoring the line behind him, asking her about the coffee beans (about which she knew nothing) or the pastries (delivered weekly by a supplier). He'd do anything, those days, to get their brief transactions to last longer than they should have; he'd show up on campus where he knew she'd be, find reasons to bump into her, leave behind his desi posse to linger on Sproul Plaza, where she recruited for activist groups and ran teach-ins and sit-ins. She was his object of fascination, though she'd been plain without makeup, and he a sculpted ideal. Back then, she wondered why Rishi would be interested in her, aside from the fact that she was tall and reasonably fit. She concluded that a person as immaculately beautiful as Rishi might stop looking for beauty in others. He'd search instead for the non-physical: intelligence, humor, all around chutzpah. Kavya reasoned that she must have possessed some combination of these—or was it simply the fact that she seemed, for a while, to want nothing to do with Rishi? In a world that admired handsome men, welcomed them, promoted them, Kavya became the unattainable, the object of Rishi's devotion.

But this: this wasn't devotion. The hand on her knee was a gentle plea to please be quiet, to let him drive and think in peace of whatever it was he was thinking. She jerked her knee, and the hand slid off.

Excerpted from Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran. Copyright © 2016 by Shanthi Sekaran. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.