Born and educated in India and the States, Vijay Lakshmi, a critic and social commentator, writes of the psychological conflicts and moral dilemmas of the Indian women settling in western societies. Her fiction, lyrical and intense, portrays the alienation and the pathos of the life lived in a contemporary metropolis, whether American, European, or Indian. Her awards include a Senior Fulbright Fellowship at Yale University, and Editor's Prize from Orbis (U.K.) for her story Touchline. Two of her other stories Mannequin and Distances have been translated into French and Chinese.