Her comic illustrations gave a glimpse of how Marjane Satrapi would have looked in person. In both of her bestselling books, she is sitting with a cigarette. Defiance marks her illustrations.Her first photograph appears in Embroideries, third in line after Persepolis and Persepolis 2, in part growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution and a teenager in exile. It throws up black shoulder-length hair, hooded eyes (perhaps a tip from her grandmother who took opium to create the effect) and the bewitching smile. The author of the bestselling and award-winning comic book autobiography couldn’t have looked different from the illustrations that have made her famous, could she?Given to conducting discourses with God at the age of 10, and engaging in conversations with Descartes and Marx, Satrapi’s not-so ordinary childhood in ’80s Iran is a sweet-sad tale of the price that totalitarian regimes extract from individuals such has her. Rebellious and defiant, Satrapi rocks to western music and abandons the veil.Persepolis 2 is a teenager’s account of living in exile, in this case Vienna, where her parents send her for schooling. An adolescent’s account of falling in and out of love, and an outsider’s attempts at wanting to belong. Her homecoming is difficult as she realises she is an outsider in the country of her birth. Funny and sad like its predecessor, Persepolis 2 is a searing critique of life in a fundamentalist state that refuses to accept every individual’s right to creativity and to engage in a rational manner with the world around her.But it is in Embroideries that Satrapi soars. An ordinary afternoon spent in the company of a fiercely independent grandmother, an aunt, mother and their friends turns out a frank discussion on the sex lives of these women “faking” and living to keep their marriages and appearances intact.They have been through plastic surgeries, as one woman recounts taking excess flab from the b*** to the the breasts which has made her husband happy, only he doesn’t know. Another has lost her virginity before marriage and wants to fix it. Satrapi’s grandmother’s advice: You just have an embroidery. Suddenly, embroidery acquires a new meaning where stitching and sewing is required to keep a man happy.Satrapi’s aunts could be yours. Her grandmother could be yours too. Remember how your grandmother chewed betel leaves to keep her lips ruddy or your aunt who wore trousers under her saree? It was all about keeping up appearances. At one level, it strikes a familiar note. At another, it is different. But Marjane Satrapi’s women are women to the core.