Rajeev Balasubramanyam

Rajeev Balasubramanyam (b. 1974) born in 1974 in Lancashire, England, and is a graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge Universities.

His debut novel In Beautiful Disguises was the winner of a Betty Trask Prize. He was also shortlisted for the Ian St James Short Story Award.

Works

• In Beautiful Disguises {2000}

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In Beautiful Disguises

In Beautiful Disguises explores the human tendency of creating inner fantasy to cope with less than pleasant life circumstance. The narrator of this slim novel is a 16-year-old girl living in India with her unemployed couch potato brother and alcoholic, violently abusive father. While this girl’s brother is beaten repeatedly by the father, the girl finds comfort in the local movie house. In the air-conditioned sanctity of the theatre she can watch glamorous actresses dance their way through complicated plots. Every story she sees ends with a blissful ride into the sunset, and so she begins to believe that if only she could become an actress herself, she would also find a happy ending in her own otherwise miserable life.

To escape a horrible arranged marriage, she decides to run away to the big city and become a maid. Even while cleaning floors and hand-washing bales of laundry, she holds onto her dream. She might look like a maid on the outside (dirty, clad in rags), but on the inside she knows she is an actress, a star. She clings to her fantasies even while enduring the attacks of her new boss. Her dreams never die, and she never gives up hope.

Source: Cecilia Johnson in Go-Go Magazine