Nine women sit across each other at the dining table, dressed in soft whites and golds, colours of a typical kasavu saree from Kerala. Their meal is spread out on delicate banana leaves. They’ve spent the last few weeks reading Abraham Verghese’s latest title, The Covenant of Water, set in south India of the 1900s. This was the 70th pick of their book club, Not Just a Book Club. “We had seen everyone raving about it. But we were a little hesitant at the beginning because of its size,” laughs Soneera Singhvi, one of the members. “After a couple of the members read it and loved it though, we decided to go ahead with it.”

The book of the month