Good that book innit? I've just finished it

"Good that book, innit? I've just finished it." Poor man, I'm sure it was only a bit of literary intercourse he was after but he should know that women do not like to be disturbed in the middle of a book. Opposite me a young girl immersed in Animal Husbandry did not look at all happy when the heavily tattooed man with a fistful of gold rings next to her tried to strike up a conversation. Another woman had folded over the cover of her book so it could have been that new book on masochism - either that or she was a masochist and it was a Jeffrey Archer. On the Tube last week I thought I had stumbled on an Underground book club - a man in his early twenties revisiting his teens with Junk by Melvyn Burgess was sitting next to an older woman reading Of Mice and Men; next to me was a man showing off his Foucault while two seats down someone too old for it to be an A-level text was half way through Brave New World. IT'S OFTEN said that we are not a literary nation I would dispute that. This might mean the collapse of the very ethos which has enabled this Asian business success to unfold in the first place.

But for now, not only are many Asian women proving themselves in business, they might be indicating that the secret lies not in having it all, but being clever enough not to want it all.. I was the driving force." But he has ultimate control.The next generation, says Davinder anxiously, are used to more western values of individual gratification. Impossible though this is for western feminists to imagine, many very bright Asian women have calculated that loss of personal freedom and recognition is a price worth paying in order not to emasculate men and to maintain the whole - the family. Davinder supported her husband to get his MBA: "I take full credit for his education. A women has great strength and you must do it for the family and for a good foundation."She lives with her husband and his brother's family The two women divide up the shop work and child care. And many now suffer from terrible guilt that they have not looked after their children as well as they might have.Typical is Surinder, now 46, who was forced to leave school at 14 to marry.

What followed were hellishly hard years when money was short and she had to chop meat and do the dirty work in her husband's food shop while bringing up two small children and running a home upstairs. Now they have a clothes business which is doing well, but for Surinder the relief is limited: "I have made a lot of sacrifices My husband normally goes out without me He goes on holidays, plays sports, does what he wants I worry and feel guilty if I am ever away I have missed out on life I can't go to weddings, functions and holidays I don't want my daughters to go through what I did. But the family has security which I never had."Others even in this "invisible" group seem to have found a way of finding more personal fulfilment. Davinder grew up in India, in a highly educated family and has an MA in political science. Imagine how she fitted into Southall, a working-class area, where her less-educated husband had a shop: "I just kept on crying But you have to face life and make the most of it.

Many of the women in her report were petrified of talking to Dhaliwal. These were the "hidden" women who do mundane, grinding work and have no control over the finances or anything else. Because we are conditioned to think it is wrong for a woman or girl to show off, to describe their achievements, to want personal success. And men and their families simply expect female contributions, like it is their right."For every Parween or Bushra who make it, thosusands more will be exploited by their own families. Unlike many other women high-fliers, successful Asian women go in for a lot of conspicuous complimenting of their families as if to protect themselves against accusations of selfishness or (God forbid) feminism.Dhaliwal feels, however, that while duty to family not something to be dismissed lightly, what is wholly unacceptable is the contributions made by Asian women have been rendered invisible by the community and the wider society: "Asian women have worked twice as hard as the men in the family businesses.