Nandita Puri's debut book "Nine On Nine", which got all the celebrity spurring it can, disperses domestic wisdom and homespun tales with a dash of desi drama.

With superstar Amitabh Bachchan releasing it, Shobhaa De and Khushwant Singh lending the blurbs, M.F. Husain the cover, Gulzar a foreword and the author herself married to actor Om Puri, "Nine On Nine" is coated with ample celluloid stardust.

Says Khushwant Singh: "Engrossing, authentic, well-worded. All the stories in Nandita Puri's collection hold the reader's attention because they ring true and are well crafted."

Shobhaa De is a bit more tempered: "(Nandita) displays a fine ear for dialogue and is spot-on when capturing the verbal nuances of different communities."

Dazzling stuff that makes it difficult to drain the dross from the debut. But former journalist Puri's stories take the domestic route so categorically that all glamour recedes as the read begins.

Published by Rupa And Company, "Nine On Nine" tells nine tales, mainly women-oriented, of Indian marriages that turn all wonky in the end, of widows and their woes.

An arranged marriage falls apart, tragically short of expectations. In a beauty parlour, friendly gossip unearths uncomfortable truths. In pre-independent India, a young widow fights to succeed in a profession that is an exclusive male preserve. And an ageing music teacher refuses to let poverty snuff out her dreams.

The stories are simple and straightforward and studded largely with verbal dialogues. The telling is clear-cut and Puri employs the sane, sensible voice of the urban Indian woman who sees it all and has just begun to speak out.