One Foot on the Ground

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One of the finest and most unusual autobiographies written in contemporary India. In this unusual, extraordinary autobiography, Shanta Gokhale-writer, translator and one of India's most illuminating cultural commentators-traces the arc of her life over eight decades through the progress of her body, as it grows, matures and begins to wind down. Starting with her birth in 1939-in philosophic silence, till the doctor's slap on her bottom made her bawl-she recounts her childhood, youth and middle and old age in chapters built around the many elements and processes of the physical self: tonsils and adenoids, breasts and misaligned teeth, childbirth and fluctuating weight, cancer and bunions. And through these memories emerge others, less visible but just as defining: a carefree childhood growing up in a progressive Marathi household in Mumbai's Shivaji Park, the pleasures, in adolescence, of badminton, Kathak and hairdressing, the warmth of friends and an almost love in cold England, finding and losing a mate-twice-and bringing up her children as a single parent, the great thrill of her first translation from Marathi into English, nursing her mother, dying of cancer, as she would a baby, surviving cancer herself, and writing her second novel through the recovery. Told with effortless humour and candour, One Foot on the Ground is the story of a life full of happiness, heartbreak, wonder and acceptance. It will rank among the finest personal histories written in India.