IRA MATH­UR

In­dia’s pop­u­la­tion ex­ceeds 1.4 bil­lion, near­ly half of them women. In ur­ban In­dia, more women are ed­u­cat­ed, de­lay mar­riage, and live in­de­pen­dent­ly, along­side ris­ing di­vorce rates in ma­jor cities. Mum­bai, In­dia’s fi­nan­cial cap­i­tal, is home to more than 20 mil­lion peo­ple and ranks among the world’s most dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed and ex­pen­sive ur­ban re­gions.

There is no le­gal pro­hi­bi­tion pre­vent­ing land­lords or hous­ing so­ci­eties from re­fus­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion based on mar­i­tal sta­tus. In prac­tice, un­writ­ten ideas of re­spectabil­i­ty—par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing di­vorced and sin­gle women—de­ter­mine who is al­lowed to rent and who is not.

Sex­ist in­jus­tice is the ba­sis of Shu­nali Khullar Shroff’s work. A Mum­bai-based writer, Shroff writes across fic­tion, mem­oir, es­says, and cul­tur­al com­men­tary, with a sus­tained fo­cus on mar­riage, class, mon­ey, and women’s in­te­ri­or lives in ur­ban In­dia. She is the au­thor of the best­selling nov­el Love in the Time of Af­fluen­za (Pen­guin In­dia, 2010) and the mem­oir Bat­tle Hymn of a Be­wil­dered Moth­er (Pen­guin In­dia, 2015).

Shroff wrote The Wrong Way Home (Blooms­bury In­dia, De­cem­ber 2025) as a re­sponse to ris­ing di­vorce in In­dia. “While a di­vorced man is eas­i­ly ac­cept­ed by so­ci­ety, there’s still an ex­pec­ta­tion that if a woman hasn’t man­aged to find some­one, or keep some­one, and have a fam­i­ly, it must some­how be her fault.

“Even in mod­ern In­dia, a sin­gle, di­vorced woman who is at­trac­tive, fi­nan­cial­ly in­de­pen­dent, and knows her own mind is seen as slight­ly dan­ger­ous. Es­pe­cial­ly by cou­ples. She is per­ceived as a threat to a care­ful­ly con­struct­ed so­cial or­der. Sin­gle women of­ten end up plan­ning their own hol­i­days, find­ing oth­er sin­gle friends, and cre­at­ing par­al­lel lives. And if they are in­clud­ed in larg­er groups, it’s usu­al­ly on­ly when the num­bers feel safe enough. Nev­er in more in­ti­mate set­tings. You al­most nev­er see a cou­ple and a sin­gle woman go­ing away to­geth­er for a week­end.

“Women who find them­selves sin­gle in their thir­ties or ear­ly for­ties of­ten as­sume they’ll meet some­one else. But it doesn’t al­ways turn out that way. And hav­ing to con­tend with that kind of lone­li­ness—when most peo­ple around you have fam­i­lies—is some­thing we don’t talk about hon­est­ly enough.”

Shroff’s book will res­onate with women every­where. “I want­ed to be in­side the head of a flawed woman—some­one cling­ing to a mar­riage for all the wrong rea­sons, and then strug­gling with be­ing qui­et­ly pushed out of the so­ci­ety she once be­longed to. She wants to be­long again. And some­where along the way, she los­es her­self.”

Ex­cerpt from The Wrong Way Home (Blooms­bury In­dia, De­cem­ber 2025) by Shu­nali Khullar Shroff

“I trudge through a seem­ing­ly end­less pa­rade of apart­ments, each one more dis­ap­point­ing than the last. Tiny, claus­tro­pho­bic pi­geon­holes that make coffins seem roomi­er in com­par­i­son. And what are these prices? It is like high­way rob­bery. But just as I’m about to give up hope and re­sign my­self to a life of squat­ting in my of­fice, I stum­ble up­on a hid­den gem in Ban­dra.

It’s a sim­ple but airy flat in a new build­ing in a qui­et lane that faces some old but charm­ing bun­ga­lows be­yond which is the sea. A flat of­fer­ing even par­tial views of the sea in Bom­bay is gold, and I say ‘yes’ the minute I step out on­to the vast bal­cony.

A meet­ing with the land­lords has been fixed, and I’ve dressed mod­est­ly in sal­waar kameez to make a good im­pres­sion on them, be­cause god knows, all your sins are for­giv­en in this coun­try if you dress de­mure­ly.

Now Pallavi Ag­gar­w­al, the un­smil­ing own­er of the flat, is quite the sight, decked out in shiny Dolce & Gab­bana kicks you’d ex­pect on some­one half her age, and rock­ing a bag­gy sweater over leg­gings.

A Louis Vuit­ton tote, splashed with some­one’s paint par­ty, swings from her arm.

Her house­hus­band, a nice and docile-look­ing gen­tle­man, ac­com­pa­nies her to meet me and to dis­cuss busi­ness on his wife’s be­half. To­geth­er, we walk around the apart­ment, and even though it is on­ly a two-bed­room space, it’s beau­ti­ful­ly laid out, with a glass wall over­look­ing the palm trees and the sea be­yond. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it has a fair­ly large walk-in clos­et at­tached to the mas­ter bed­room, which has made me want this apart­ment so des­per­ate­ly.

‘I love the sun­set from here,’ Mrs Ag­gar­w­al tells me, slid­ing open the bal­cony door. ‘If this flat was any big­ger, we could’ve lived here with our chil­dren.’

‘So, the bro­ker told me you’re di­vorced?’ Pallavi asks, her eye­brows slight­ly raised, while Mr Ag­gar­w­al speaks to the bro­ker in the liv­ing room. She some­how makes the word ‘di­vorced’ sound like a dis­ease. She could as eas­i­ly have said, ‘So, the bro­ker told me you have her­pes.’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ I re­ply with a smile.

Pallavi’s eyes widen a bit as she glances at me with a mix of cu­rios­i­ty and dis­ap­proval—the same look I al­ways get when I men­tion I’m di­vorced to old­er mar­ried women.

‘Oh, I see,’ Pallavi says slow­ly, her words mea­sured and de­lib­er­ate.

She ab­sent­ly smooths an in­vis­i­ble wrin­kle on her top, her chrome gold nails catch­ing the light.

She paus­es for a mo­ment, her gaze drift­ing briefly to­wards the liv­ing room where her hus­band is still en­grossed in con­ver­sa­tion. Tak­ing a step clos­er to me, she low­ers her voice, ‘Look, you’re our first ten­ant, so please han­dle it with care,’ she looks at me di­rect­ly and says. ‘It is a home and should re­main one. The build­ing so­ci­ety won’t like it oth­er­wise.’

I get it. That’s a po­lite way of say­ing, ‘now that you’re di­vorced, please don’t be a sl*t and bring men up here and have hot sex with them’. How do I tell this woman that at this point in my life, I’m as far away from hav­ing hot sex with men as Plu­to is from the sun. I mean, Plu­to isn’t even con­sid­ered a plan­et any­more; they’re now re­fer­ring to it as an ob­ject in the Kuiper belt. That’s how far re­moved I am from hav­ing any ‘hot’ es­capades with men. It’s like I’ve drift­ed off in­to a whole dif­fer­ent cos­mic realm of sin­gle­hood.

I as­sure her she will have no cause for con­cern once I move in. Mr and Mrs Ag­gar­w­al have a lit­tle chat pri­vate­ly and re­turn to me short­ly. Their col­lec­tive ex­pres­sion is still stern, how­ev­er.

‘Fine, we will give you the apart­ment,’ Mrs Ag­gar­w­al says grumpi­ly, and I am so thrilled with the news that I for­get to ne­go­ti­ate, much to my bro­ker’s dis­ap­point­ment.

As we shake hands, I in­ter­nal­ly do cart­wheels with joy. I know the uni­verse is fi­nal­ly on my side. When one door clos­es, an­oth­er opens—quite lit­er­al­ly in this case.

I can’t wipe the smile off my face for the rest of the evening.

A beau­ti­ful new house in Bom­bay is as close as it gets to the promise of a good life. Af­ter slum­ming it in that pokey lit­tle apart­ment, this gem of a place is noth­ing short of a stroke of luck. The af­fir­ma­tions, Ni­na Bar­ret, and even God him­self—they’ve all made this hap­pen.

But as the evening winds down, re­al­i­ty creeps back in, as it al­ways does. A beau­ti­ful house is one thing, but the si­lence of an emp­ty home is an­oth­er. Whether you ad­mit it or not, be­ing sin­gle is like liv­ing in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent coun­try from be­ing mar­ried. And one would think that I’d fi­nal­ly feel ad­just­ed to this af­ter all these months, but com­ing home to an emp­ty apart­ment day af­ter day is enough to make any­one crazy—es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing hol­i­days and the mon­soons.”

End of Ex­cerpt

Shu­nali Khullar Shroff is al­so the co-host of Not Your Aun­ty, which has ranked among the Top 100 Pod­casts glob­al­ly.

Ira Math­ur is a free­lance jour­nal­ist, a Guardian colum­nist, and the win­ner of the 2023 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Non-Fic­tion.