Dollar Bahu by Sudha Murty

Description

A story of how money corrupts the way people look at one another and how it can almost tear a family apart Vinuta marries Girish, a bank clerk, and starts living with his family in Bangalore. She adjusts to her new family well, looking after her husband, father-in-law and mother-in-law Gouramma, not taking to heart her mother-in-law’s constant picking. But when Girish’s elder brother Chandru, who is in the US, decides to get married, Vinuta has to listen to the constant comparisons made between her and Chandru’s wife, the ‘Dollar Bahu’, whose husband earns the valuable dollars that has brought the family its recent affluence. Vinuta slowly loses her peace of mind and health. Then Gouramma decides to visit her US-based son and daughter-in-law. Once there, she sees how liberating life can be, away from the strict norms that govern Indian middle-class life. But she also begins to understand that mere dollars cannot buy the love and respect that she gets as her due back in India. Does Gouramma forge a new relationship with Vinuta and can Vinuta forgive and forget the past?

A touching novella about family, values, and the lure of Western affluence, Dollar Bahu follows Vinuta, a loving daughter-in-law who marries into a traditional middle-class family in Bangalore. Tensions rise when her mother-in-law, Gouramma, begins idealizing Chandru’s wife—an NRI earning “dollars”—and treats Vinuta unfairly. As Gouramma later visits the US and witnesses a lifestyle devoid of the warm ties she cherished in India, she learns a powerful lesson: money can provide comfort, but it can’t buy love or belonging