Ira Trivedi

Ira Trivedi is an Indian novelist, yoga teacher, and speaker.^[1]

Her published works are India in Love: Marriage and Sexuality in the 21st century (Aleph 2014), What Would You Do To Save the World? (Penguin 2006), The Great Indian Love Story (Penguin 2009) and There is No Love on Wall Street (Penguin 2011). Her first book was published when she was 19.

Trivedi is also a journalist and writes for publications including Foreign Affairs, Times of India, Hindustan Times, India Today, Hindu, DNA, Deccan Chronicle,^[2] The Telegraph,^[3] Femina,^[4] Marie Claire, and Cosmopolitan. Her writing is mostly on issues of gender and culture in India. Trivedi regularly appears on news channels in India and internationally speaking on issues of gender, women and youth.

Trivedi speaks at colleges across India, including IIMs, IITs and NITs. She has delivered a TED talk and several TEDx talks.

She holds an MBA from Columbia Business School where she won the Feldberg Fellowship and a BA in Economics from Wellesley College.

Works

India in Love: Marriage and Sexuality in the 21st Century

India in Love: Marriage and Sexuality in the 21st Century is a 2014 non-fiction book.^[5][6][7][8] The book is about India's new social revolution in marriage and sexuality. It describes the major social changes that Indian society is going through today. Trivedi travelled to over a dozen cities and interviewed 500 people including academics, policy makers, law-enforcers and other participants in India's sexual and marriage revolution.^{[1][9][10][11]} India in Love is her first work of non-fiction, and it is divided into two parts; sexuality, and marriage.^[12]

What would you do to Save the World?

What would you do to Save the World? – confessions of a could-have-been beauty queen, is the story of a small town Indian girl who has dreamed of becoming a Miss India Beauty ever since her childhood.

The book talks about the murky ongoings behind the scenes of an Indian beauty pageant, told by the perspective of Riya.

Though a work of fiction, it draws inspiration from real-life characters, many of whom are painted vividly in the book. Times of India called it 'An original book by a young girl in the current scenario of plagiarism and packaging novels is creditable... For the first time, a 'Could-have-been Beauty Queen', Ira Trivedi, a beauty pageant participant, pens a bare-all account of the process from application to the commonplace final question asked of the five finalists, that is the title of her book, 'What Would You Do to Save the World?' '.(Penguin Books)^[13]

It has also been termed as 'An entertaining first novel (Deccan Herald)^[14]', with a letter-perfect analysis of the social phenomenon known as South Bombay...(Outlook)^[15]'.

The Great Indian Love Story

The Great Indian Love story starts with Riya, who fails to find a job in US after finishing college and left with no choice returns to Delhi, her hometown – a town she hasn’t lived in since she was a young girl. In Delhi, Riya meets Serena, a troubled young woman whom she befriends and through whose eyes Riya sees Delhi’s high life and its accompanying dark side.

The Great Indian Love Story also tells the story of Parmeet, Serena's mother, who looks for passion outside her marriage with disastrous consequences, and S.P. Sharma, Parmeet's husband, who is driven to violence by her infidelity.

There's no Love on Wall Street

Continuing with the ritual of naming her protagonists, Riya, in her third book too, Trivedi tells the story of a pre-medical student who gives up the life of latex gloves for the charms of the Wall Street. As an intern at Goldstein Smith, Riya works long, tedious hours, gets caught up in an insider trading scam, and discovers a hedonistic life style which is not really as glamorous as it once appeared. She finds solace in an unreachable love– Jonathan, a Vice President at Goldestein Smith.

This book took five years of planning and writing, revealed Trivedia, during her talk at the annual literary festival of IIT Delhi, LITERATI 2011. When asked about her fascination with the name Riya, Trivedi said that such a fascination did not exist, it was just a name that stuck through.

There's no Love on Wall Street'^[16] was released at the Jaipur Literature Festival by Pulitzer Prize winning author Junot Diaz. According to a DNA review, the book's ' microscopic look at banking is severely convincing. Plus, the BlackBerry is where it rightfully belongs, in banking, and not in the manicured palms of teen princesses '.^[17]

Personal

Ira is the founder of Namami Yoga,^[18] a foundation that brings yoga to the underprivileged. She is a certified teacher of yoga. Ira led the yoga session at the 1st International Day of Yoga at Rajpath, New Delhi where Prime Minister Narender Modi along with 35,000 people did yoga.^[19] The Rajpath event broke the world record for the largest yoga class, with 35,985 people performing the ancient Indian discipline at once.^[20]

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ira Trivedi.

• Official website