The first response while reading Pinky Virani's Bitter Chocolate is: revolting!
Bitter Chocolate by Pinky Virani Penguin Books, 2000 245p INR 295
But then truth seldom is palatable. And it is unlikely that Virani wants to sugar coat reality. The reality as it stands is that child sexual abuse does exist in India and—as the hook reveals—about 20 percent of boys and girls under the age of sixteen are being regularly sexually abused in their own homes. The perpetrators of the crime are usually people who have the child's trust, uncles, neighbours and sometimes parents too. And shockingly. it occurs in the "it can't happen to us" families: the crimes take place in middle and upper class families who not only sexually abuse their children hut also browbeat them into submission and silence.
Pinky Virani, a journalist, shot to fame with her debut Aruna's Story. the true story of a young nurse comatose for fifty years, reduced to a human vegetable after being raped by her colleague at the hospital she worked in. The book created a storm and plumbed the depths of the torture a woman raped may have to go through. Virani continues her tryst with truth. And the truth begins at home; the hook opens with an account of the author's own experience.