About the Book: One Foot on the Ground
In this unusual, extraordinary autobiography, Shanta Gokhale—writer, translator
and one of Indias most illuminating cultural commentators— traces the arc of her
life over eight decades through the progress of her body, as it grows, matures
and begins to wind down. Starting with her birth in 1939—in philosophic silence,
till the doctors slap on her bottom made her bawl—she recounts her childhood,
youth and middle and old age in chapters built around the many elements and
processes of the physical self: tonsils and adenoids, breasts and misaligned
teeth; childbirth and fluctuating weight, cancer and bunions. And through these
memories emerge