Socialite Evenings

Socialite Evenings is Shobha De's first novel. It describes a backdrop of Bombay high society and the lives of bored, rich housewives trapped in loveless marriages and engaging in ill-fated extramarital affairs, smug selfish husbands who use their wives more for social respectability than for love, fashionable parties, false spiritual leaders, and a portrait of the general moral, spiritual and intellectual bankruptcy and decadence of the Mumbai Elite who have traded in their traditional culture for near total Westernization and the discarding of any discernible values other than materialism.... Karuna, the main protagonist and narrator is caught up in a drab, boring life and she seeks to escape by writing her memoirs. Her memoirs are successful and she achieves a measure of fame and pride in herself as she becomes an active socialite and eventually uses her newfound prominence as a celebrity to get herself a position as an advertising copywriter and creator of a television series. Socialite Evenings was a critical disaster but a commercial success, likely due in part to its racy and controversial content, something that was fairly new in India at the time.
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