The Other Wife A Novel in Verse

Leela is about to enter her second marriage. In the seven steps she would take around the marital fire, she would become a stranger to one man, and the intimate part of another manA[a¬a[s body. As she takes each step, she reminisces her falling in love with her first husband, Salim; her fighting against her father to become SalimA[a¬a[s; and the inevitable death it would bring her father. When Salim exercises his Muslim polygamist right and marries a second wife, Leela leaves him. To repay the debt she owed her dead father, she decides to marry the man he always wanted for her A[a¬a Shiva, a married man. As Leela traces her seven steps around the marital fire, she recounts her journey through love, elopement, marriage, divorce, and a second marriage A[a¬a her journey from being the first wife to the other wife. The Other Wife is a look into the directions in which those seven steps take a person and the ways in which a life repents them. It is also a breathtaking, deeply affecting collection that deals with one womanA[a¬a[s struggle to find an identity for herself.