India, March 25 -- Alina Gufran's debut novel, No Place To Call My Own, chronicles the journey of an aspiring film-maker who lacks the financial resources to support her dream and attempts to drown her worries in drugs, alcohol and men. The book presents young women's relationships with men and with each other and addresses women's emotional labour in romantic situations, the hurt and unresolved trauma that they carry around. How can women achieve social equity in a society still stuck in patriarchal mind sets? What happens to expectations from female friendships? This is the real world, one where women are treated as disposable objects.

'The only way I could understand my last meeting with Azhar was if I could view it as something that ...