Anu Koduri was born and raised in India in a very traditional family. She finished her medical studies in Hyderabad. Called a bookworm by everybody who knew her, she came to Chicago like scores of her classmates to join her husband, a doctor, after an arranged marriage. After coming to the USA, she realized that the relationship between a couple was unequal and that the woman was supposed to give herself, her aspirations, and her identity to the husband in an Indian marriage. She lives in Chicago and Hyderabad and has two children and three grandchildren. She practiced in both countries. She has been married 50 years to her husband – a testament that something worked in their marriage. She trained at Cook County Hospital – which catered to the indigenous population and then in the private sector and is still practicing in India.

She has had contact with many Indian families, both as friends and relatives, even her own, and realized that education does not confer any relief from the baggage of the centuries old tradition of India. She felt compelled to write this book looking at the travails of many of her friends and patients, how they endured, and how their own families were on the side of the tradition: not on their side. That is how the germ of this idea was born.