The Vibrant Years
Sonali Dev
A NOTE FROM MINDY KALING
What does it mean to live life on your own terms?
Sonali Dev’s hilarious and heartwarming novel The Vibrant Years is the story of three generations of women in one family who are determined to find the answer to that question for themselves. They are at different stages in life, each dealing with their own issues, but they can lean on each other for advice, support, and, of course, laughter when nothing else works.
I was so charmed by the novel’s rebel women. There’s Bindu, everyone’s favorite grandmother, who after years of going along with what was expected of her, finally reclaims her identity for herself. She’s now the shiny new fish in her retirement community’s dating pond. We meet Aly, who continues to chase her dreams, but when she realizes her employer will never give her a big break, she takes matters into her own hands. And there’s young genius Cullie, who has created an app that helps millions of people suffering from anxiety, people like herself—and when the app’s availability to help others is threatened, she won’t let anyone get in her way, even if it means she’ll have to step into the world of demoralizing dating apps. Luckily, she has a hot granny and a newly single mom to help her with the research . . .
The Vibrant Years is bursting with humor, banter, and cringeworthy first dates that kept me smiling as I read through the pages. But more than being just a fun read, it’s also a timely tale about a group of underestimated and unrepresented women demanding respect and embracing their most authentic selves, who support and lift each other up through the most difficult times, which perfectly exemplifies the spirit of Mindy’s Book Studio. I fell in love with this quirky family of women, and now I hope that you too enjoy the first Mindy’s Book Studio release!
Poornima is the full moon.
Auspicious.
Romantic.
Illuminating.
Not rare, only rhythmic. Arriving every month with the dependability of breath. In, then out. Growing from a sliver to wholeness.
Hiding in the dark, then blazing to full, circular glory.
Only to disappear again, crescent by crescent.
But always whole behind the shadows.
They’d told him never to forget that he was the earth and she the moon.
That it was the only way. For both to know where they stood as they orbited the sun.
If she learned that she could be the earth too, and he let himself be the moon, they’d cause an eclipse. Plunge the universe into an endless night, burn it away.
Or, maybe,
They’d be blinded by darkness to relearn the light They’d burn in the light to relearn the darkness One nothing without the other She sometimes the earth and sometimes the moon.
He sometimes the earth and sometimes the moon.
CHAPTER ONE
BINDU
The way a woman wears the color red tells you everything you need to know about how she sees herself. The first time I saw Bhanu, she was wearing a red bikini.
From the journal of Oscar Seth
It wasn’t every day that someone left you a million dollars, without so much as a warning and no way to give it back, no matter how badly you wanted to. For years Bindu Desai had believed that life was a series of accidents waiting to happen, fragile beads strung together on threads of varying strengths. The only way to keep them from shattering was to stand utterly still and hold them as carefully as she possibly could. Then, twenty-six years ago, her husband had died, two days after Bindu’s thirty-ninth birthday, and she swore to take them off and Move! Dance! She didn’t care if the beads shattered. She was going to live.
But everyone in her neighborhood in Mumbai knew her. Mrs. Bindu Desai, wife of Dr. Rajendra Desai, mother of Ashish Desai, who was studying engineering somewhere in America.
Sure, her choice to keep wearing bright colors as a new widow was met with tolerant smiles, but when she’d worn her Western blouses and pants outside the house instead of her usual salwar kameez, the women in her building had started to avoid her. Especially if she dropped in on them after the husbands got home from work.
Turned out Moving! Dancing! wasn’t quite so simple, because all her friends were still wearing their fragile beads.
Then her son announced that he was getting married to a woman he’d met at the University of Florida. They’d been in love for three years. Ashish had told Bindu about Alisha in confidence because his father would never be okay with his son marrying a Catholic girl. Even if she was Indian. Well, Indian American.
Alisha’s parents were from Goa, but she had grown up in America. Being from Goa herself, Bindu felt like she’d won some special intraparental prize when Ashish had chosen a wife from her hometown. Too bad Rajendra would never know that she had won that marital contest.
He’d also never know that because he’d died and left Bindu alone, she’d been free to move to America and move in with Ashish and Alisha when they had Cullie while still in grad school and needed help raising her. Some accidents were actually beautiful.
Her daughter-in-law was one of Bindu’s favorite people on earth. Sure, she was a bit—how could Bindu put this delicately—uptight? One of those people who always had to do the right thing. But Bindu didn’t mind. She liked when people felt free to be who they were.
After Ashish and Alisha had gotten divorced two years ago, after twenty-three years of marriage, Bindu had chosen to go on living with her daughter-in-law. For one, Alisha had asked her to. For another, Bindu now moved and danced to her own tune. At least as best she could, which at sixty-five was not unworthy of pride.
That didn’t mean, every once in a while, she wasn’t livid enough at her daughter-in-law to want to drown her in the neighborhood pool. This morning they’d had one of those fights, triggered by something so insignificant that halfway through you forgot what started it.
Well, an empty chai cup started it. Bindu had left the blameless thing on the coffee table, preoccupied as she was with the unexpected million dollars. Why on earth would anyone leave such an obscene sum to a woman whose life he’d almost destroyed? What had he possibly hoped to gain, other than digging up old pain and secrets? Ever since the money had shown up, Bindu had felt like she’d been hit by a truck, one filled with every shameful mistake of her youth.
Alisha had snapped at Bindu, in her passive-aggressive way, about not using a coaster, probably preoccupied with some new stunt her bully of a boss had pulled.
“It’s a table, Alisha! It doesn’t have feelings. And it’s ugly anyway,” Bindu snapped back.
The coffee table was a gift from Alisha’s mother. Which explained why it was ugly and why it needed so very much care. If Bindu had her way, she’d only ever buy furniture she could dance on, with heels!
Nonetheless, she shouldn’t have said it, and from that moment on things had snowballed out of control. Hurtful words were tossed about, fragile beads shattering one by one, until Bindu declared that she was going to the open house at the retirement community that Debbie Romano had been pestering Bindu to accompany her to.
Debbie lived a few houses down from the house Bindu shared with Alisha in Naples, Florida. For years Debbie had been Bindu’s walking buddy. They walked five miles daily, each committed to never missing a day.
Over the past year, Debbie, who was ten years older than Bindu, had turned repetitive in her conversation. Bindu responded by learning how to block out the parts she’d heard before. When you spent hours walking with someone, it might seem easy to confuse company with friendship, but Bindu didn’t have that problem. Defining relationships and responding to them with exactly what they needed was one of her greatest skills.