Girls Aloud In Pastel World

A witty book will have its reviewer in a bind. Why would you judge when it is self-confessedly a romantic comedy professing no more than to provide merriment? Be not worried about regression, stereotypes or a certain type of bathos that passes off as post-feminist irony. Come, cast off the detritus of that hard-earned sexual politics embedded in the way you make your morning coffee, react to Obama, water scarcity, Oedipus, the ‘have it all-ness’, your elbow and so on. Float your ship lightly into a peachy, puerile, champa-scented world of lovers. No, I am not working up a ‘bitchy lip-curl’ here, considering that I have resolutely battled romance maligners. Helen Fielding over James Hadley Chase—that sort of quarrel. Not that romance, such as the one being reviewed, is ever in real distress. It reinvents itself now and then, becomes perkier, the women go from being secretaries to editors in publishing houses, but at the heart of it is the unchanging key ingredient—a dishy guy who can pin the woman against a wall and take her breath away. Anuja Chauhan’s latest, Those Pricey Thakur Girls, does justice to the genre.

The author’s fine penchant for spiffy tales, peopled with lovable caricatures, gives us another crisp novel fresh from the patisserie. Like in all good romances, the plot is redundant. Boy-meets-girl, a tiny grey cloud hovers in the otherwise periwinkle blue sky, threatening to cause the mandatory lovers’ tiff—a scathing review in this case—and heighten sexual tension. Misunderstood and threadbare from overuse, the Jane Austen template finds itself at work again and requires Debjani, the heroine, to be one of the five daughters of Justice L.N. Thakur. Set in the Delhi of 1980s, the story unfolds in leafy Lutyens, a pastel world untouched by grisly realities such as the anti-Sikh riots which, ironically, feature as an important driver of events.

By day, Debjani is a newsreader on Doordarshan. Off screen, she lets her hair loose, sleeps under the jacaranda or amaltas, whichever is in bloom, wears a silver ladybird anklet, is a “lover of losers” and falls grudgingly in love with Dylan, who is “a master player, accomplished flirt”. Binary bees buzz madly in our prudish bonnets. But who gives a damn to literary types surviving on a diet of political tapas. Here is a veritable swoon feast of vanilla love, strawberry crush, lean jaw, hard chest, Roark-Butler type delicatessen. A gifted journalist, Dylan’s investigation of the anti-Sikh riots speeds the book along and provides the much-needed coffee-bean breaks between heady whiffs of the blushful Anais Nin. Empathetic, sprightly and charming, Debjani reads the English news on Doordarshan. But her act of subversion, when she tricks the newsmakers by reading out the other narrative instead of following what appears on her autocue, is altogether too frail to be celebrated or considered sustainable. She is after all a woman in love and the script is not her own. Dylan, on the other hand, is a news reporter, highly credible, sexy conquistador.

Attempts at nuance are but cute intentions and reveal themselves to be so. For instance, Dylan is meant to be spicier because he is a Christian Rajput. While the tarka of surnames would add no excitement to the hardened palate, it sure does give Chauhan the chance to flaunt Juliet Bai, Dylan’s mum, an adorable addition to the fairground of many such characters who inhabit this merry landscape. In a world where maps are redrawn every day, the smug cocoon of Hailey Road is reductive beyond a point. Everything else is everywhere else and matters little—such as the “housing blocks of Chittaranjan Park” which are “so dehumanising”. The book is a veritable celebration of categories. Anji didi—beautiful, slutty, flirty therefore infertile and eventually grateful for husband’s love; Binni didi, a “hindi medium type” married down to a cultural infidel, hence greedy and has crass children; merchant navy officers—vain show-offs with a lot of money; students of Modern School, Barakhamba—well, students of Modern School, Barakhamba.

The book is sexy and builds up a great deal of erotic tension each time Dylan and Debjani meet on the pages. Though it sticks to stereotypes and sketches, characterisation is strong, credible, their flaws unfurled with cheerful exasperation. Written like a piece of convivial gossip, the tone is easy and merry all through, accentuated by a humour mainly sustained by hyperbole. A sub-plot involving politics-media-clout is interesting, edgy and provides a refreshing recall of the pre-liberalisation decade. Armed with crackling chemistry, a funny bone and film rights, the book is certainly going to sell—or is already doing so.