Climbing The StairsRead Padma Venkatraman's posts on the Penguin Blog. Fifteen year old Vidya dreams of going to college an unusual aspiration for a girl living in British occupied India during World War II. Then tragedy strikes, and Vidya and her brother are forced to move into a traditional household with their extended family, where women are meant to be married, not educated. Breaking the rules, Vidya finds refuge in her grandfathers library. But then her brother