Purple Lotus

De: Veena Rao

Narrado por: Jeed Saddy

Tara moves to the American South three years after her arranged marriage to tech executive Sanjay. Ignored and lonely, Tara finds herself regressing back to childhood memories that have scarred her for life. When she was eight, her parents had left her behind with her aging grandparents and a schizophrenic uncle in Mangalore, while taking her baby brother with them to make a new life for the family in Dubai.

Tara's memories of abandonment and isolation mirror her present life of loneliness and escalating abuse at the hands of her husband. She accepts the help of kind-hearted American strangers to fight Sanjay, only to be pressured by her patriarchal family to make peace with her circumstances. Then, in a moment of truth, she discovers the importance of self-worth—a revelation that gives her the courage to break free, gently rebuild her life, and even risk being shunned by her community when she marries her childhood love, Cyrus Saldanha.

Life with Cyrus is beautiful, until old fears come knocking. Ultimately, Tara must face these fears to save her relationship with Cyrus—and to confront the victim-shaming society she was raised within.

Contains mature themes.

©2020 Veena Rao (P)2022 Tantor

Absolutely horrendous narration

The story by Veena Rao was interesting, although the characters were more or less the usual Indian caricatures- and that too from 20 years ago.

The narrator....I am astounded that Jeed Saddy mispronounced every single word of Indian origin starting with "Amma". moving on to Uncle Anand and Grandpa Madhava- never mind words like "Rajagopuram" or "Bharatha Natyam". Everything was rendered with great gusto in American phonetics and sounded ridiculous. I am even more astounded that she didn't know how to pronounce "Dubai" instead pronouncing it as Dubey... Did Veena Rao not listen to the narration?

It seems slipshod and disrespectful to not even attempt to pronounce Indian names and words correctly.