On Thursday, May 22, 1997, a night of the auspicious full moon, a senseless and cruel act and a raging fire brutally altered the life of an Indian woman in a Toronto suburb.

Born in Rajasthan, India, Rita leaves her native country with her diplomat father and her famiy to spend her childhood years in charming and exotic places like Burma, Thailand, and Ghana. Her innocent, happy, and sheltered life is imbued with a deeply reflective and philosophic nature. But her childhood comes to an end, with her marriage to a fellow Indian from the diplomatic circle of Accra. Shock and horrror follow, for the union is traumatic. After living in England for a few years, the couple immigrate to Canada, where they have two children. But the outcome, ultimately, is breakup and tragedy.

Ordeal by Fire is a profoundly moving account, evocative of the tradition and romance of Rajasthan and finely portraying the life of an Indian famiy, as it leads to the story of the violence and tragedy at the end of a girl's childhood and the inner resources she gathers as a woman to be able to carry on with her life.

Rita Nayar's profile page

Rita Nayar has a university degree in Psychology and and a teaching certificate from the University of Sheffield, England. A senior corporate official in Toronto, she is also an artist and a poet and teaches Vedantic philosophy. She lives in Markham, Ontario with her daughter.

“ayar has the reader? full sympathy, for her story is achingly sad.??his story is not new... It is a story of the brutal abuses of women by their supposedly loving husbands. Except in the case of South Asian women like Rita Nayar, this spousal abuse takes Wagnerian heights and ends tragically when the insular community does not protect or at least offer shelter to the abused women. The power and control exhibited by husbands are unconscionable and inexcusable. My only consolation is the hope that the second generation of South Asian women will have the courage to stand against such abuses and enough outlets would exist for them to escape from such tyranny.It is a very difficult story to narrate in the first person. Have does one do it anyway?! But, it must be told. For that, one must thank Rita Nayar for her courage in baring her life story and her soul in the process. The epilogue does point to the slow and steady way... Why do these things happen? This is left for a later reflection by Rita Nayar or some psycho-sociologists. This book must be a required reading for all South Asian males, for we need to search our heart, mind and soul to check if any iota of Shan is in us!??Kal (Toronto