Monday, April 8, 2024

A to Z April Challenge 2024: G for THE GROOM SERIES

There are going to be four items for the letter ‘G’.

The first is the title of my book trilogy: THE GROOM SERIES. These stories are about three sisters from a village in Bihar, India. Not just bold and beautiful, Surekha, Radhika, and Vaishali, are also ambitious.

Daughters of a poor carpenter, the three young women lead their lives exactly the way they choose (all thanks to their father) despite the restrictions placed by society; so far as to even thumb their noses at such hurdles.



I am excited about the fact that I coined the word Groomnapped (Groom + kidnapped). This book follows the story of the feisty Surekha and the handsome Ameya, who is the only son of a millionaire farmer. See what happens when they fall in love. 

This is also about the dowry system which dogs the women of Bihar. The richer the groom, the more dowry is demanded. To thwart this, some have got into the habit of kidnapping young men and forcing them to tie the knot with poor young women at the point of a gun. I have based my story on this, hoping to bring a light-hearted angle to the same.
 

I simply love this word and was truly thrilled when I could make it the title for my second book in The Groom Series. This is the story of the village-born Radhika, and the city-bred Amit. They fall in love at first sight during Radhika’s sister’s groomnapped wedding; Amit being a friend of Ameya’s. They get married and she goes to live in a joint family with her husband and his parents in Delhi. 

Things come crashing down when Amit’s mother Shanti ill-treats Radhika. Hating her small-town daughter-in-law, Shanti is determined to break her son’s marriage from Day One. So much so, that Radhika ups and leaves. Amit is unable to forgive his wife (supposedly a courageous woman) for leaving him. Will the hapless couple get back together, ever?


For want of a better word, I had made this the title of the third book in my series, without a clue as to how I was going to play it out. I only knew it was going to be the story of the third sister, Vaishali. Then lockdown happened, and everyone was Grounded; with Vaishali and Avinash stuck with each other as next-door neighbours in a building in Mumbai.
 
He’s totally lost when he’s grounded after returning from abroad, with a time stamp on the back of his hand insisting that he should not come in contact with another human being. Having no clue how to even heat water, he is saved from not only starvation, but also loneliness, by his beautiful neighbour. He falls in love, but she’s dead set against marriage. Will Avinash ever find happiness with the love of his life?

All three books in this series are available on Kindle, and can be read for free on Kindle Unlimited. 



 

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