May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons: A Journey Among the Women of India

The overall powerlessness of Indian women to control any aspect of their lives became clear to Washington Post reporter Bumiller when she investigated incidents of ``bride burning'' (husbands setting fire to their wives and making it look accidental) and sati , wherein a widow immolates herself on her husband's funeral pyre. Based on her four-year residence in India, this perceptive, alert travelogue considers the prevalent custom of arranged marriage, India's scattered, budding feminist movement, population control, female infanticide, and the legacy of Indira Gandhi, a nonfeminist who ``largely ignored those of her own gender.'' Bumiller's shifting portrait gallery includes impoverished village women who start producing babies at age 14, Calcutta painters and poets, a New Delhi policewoman, and Bombay actresses who lead a ``schizophrenic'' existence as they personify traditional morality on celluloid while leading Hollywood-style love lives off-camera. Photos. (May)