A courageous and timely novel, Tears of Mehndi explores the rich, complex and often heartbreaking lives of a tight-knit community in Vancouver’s Little India. Through the perspectives of several women whose lives intertwine over a generation, Raminder Sidhu deftly exposes the shrouded violence within the Indo-Canadian community, a difficult and often dissembled subject. Sidhu’s characters are women caught between two cultures, struggling to understand the traditions they are obliged to follow while still embracing and often welcoming the fundamentally different values of the West.

Raminder Sidhu was born and raised in Mackenzie, BC, and now resides in Surrey. She holds a B.Ed. from the University of British Columbia and a BBA from the University of the Fraser Valley. Tears of Mehndi is her debut novel.

Raminder Sidhu's profile page

Ultimately an optimistic novel…The strength of Sidhu’s work is that it does not let the reader forget that things happen to people because of their positions in life, their specific ultural upbringings, their geographic locations, and their gender…[Sidhu is dedicated] to authenticity and telling the truth of [her] experiences.

Canadian Literature