Cut
Page 25
Cut is a search as much as it is a swansong. A letting-go, as much as it is a letting-in. A prayer, as much as a protest.
Cut, my fifth book, changed me in more ways than one, and because it was the novel with the longest gestation period, so to speak – from the time I began writing it in 2015 to its present year of publication – the manuscript transformed itself many times, much in the way I, as a writer and as an artist, have – and in the way this country and its conscience has. I can safely say that this is a book that echoes what a lot of us free-thinkers are thinking and feeling in the present climate.
In Cut seeing the light of this world, I would like to thank my firebrand of an editor, Nandita Aggarwal, who had wanted to acquire this book when she worked at Hachette India – home to my first three books. And subsequently, volunteered to edit it when I chose to publish it with a different publisher. To my publishers at Bloomsbury India; literary agent, Kanishka Gupta; my wonderful and ever-supportive parents, Sushmita Kundu and Krishna Rao; my little sister who is growing up way too fast, Sreelekha (Geru) – my bestest friend in the whole, wide world; Janine Martin who is my voice of sanity; my Lamaji in Delhi and Kolkata; members of my Buddhist practice, and my core circle of close friends spread over the cities of Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore - you shall always be my tribe.
Finally, to my readers, you keep me going. It is for you that I tell my stories, time after time. For you, that I have the courage to keep creating. Thank you for the loyal patronage, the mails and letters of appreciation. I could come this far, because of you.
Sreemoyee Piu Kundu is an acclaimed journalist and columnist on gender and sexuality. She wrote Faraway Music, her first novel, in 2013, followed by her bestselling feminist erotica, Sita’s Curse, which explored female desire through the eyes of a Gujarati housewife. You’ve Got the Wrong Girl, her third work of fiction, a light-hearted rom-com, broke new ground in Indian ‘lad-lit’. In 2017, she wrote her first non-fiction work, the widely-appreciated and critically-acclaimed Status Single, a narrative drawing from the lives of 3000 urban Indian single women, about the daily struggle of being single in a country where the highest validation for women remains marriage and motherhood. Sreemoyee is the recipient of the NDTV L'Oréal Women of Worth award for Excellence in Literature. She has been signed up for her memoirs, Bad Blood, by Bloomsbury and has just completed an inter-generational family saga set in Kolkata, All Our Other Lies.
Sreemoyee is single and lives between New Delhi and Kolkata.