One Indian Girl (Chetan Bhagat) - A review

I seldom pick-up a book by an Indian author - I know, I know! Still - I don't. After reading numerous discouraging review, I did pick this as it was available in my Kindle Unlimited account.

Its all about one Ms. Radhika Mehta - a Delhite currently living in London (a very successful investment banker). She decides to take a plunge into the sea of marriage (in Goa) - and from here the story starts. You get to read her life history - what she did ...blah blah!

The story moves back to New York - 4 years ago and drops in one guy, Debu - who works for some advertisement firm. Immediately they strike a bond and you can visualise a bollywood movie with a break-up, tears, etal. Amidst all this - you have a mom character from India who pesters out heroine to get married.

Then the story cuts to present - Debu is back and understands what love is. When the bride and the groom (another sad guy!) are busy exploring Goa and getting to know each other, drops in the 2nd / 3rd guy of our story, Neel.

Now from Goa, we are in the past - Hong Kong, where the our heroine does'nt waste time. She desperately needs someone to lend his shoulders - to forget Debu. And yes, ofcourse, you guessed it!

Cut to present - Goa. A bride, a groom and 2 former lovers. What does Radhika do?

This book has such a sad storyline - the author has no clue what he wants to convey.

Chetan Bhagat thinks that

- a nerd -  has no clue about personal grooming (remember the brazilian waxing?) even though she is from Delhi and has a sister who straight from any bollywood movie.
- a woman will suddenly decide to wear a dress and goes out for shopping. She has probably never shopped before but manages to get a outfit which attracts our first loser - Debu.
- a woman after one serious relationship, will plunge onto any man next available. She knows its all about "no strings attached"
- a woman -  on the day of her wedding - finds her former boyfriends visiting her (who have now understood the meaning of love). Not knowing what to do, she cancels her wedding. Couple of weeks later, readers find her travelling and "living in the moment".

Do we really need such a book, something which has no story and no depth what-so-ever. I find it to be very insulting  - Chetan has no clue about women. Just by writing few sentences about waxing, shopping, crying and using F word in the very paragraph, does not make a book let alone about a Indian girl.

I wonder why did we cut so many trees to publish such a book..

Book Review "The Lost Hours"

Karen White's book "The Lost Hours" is my first from the author.

This book is about a woman, out to discover her grandmother's secrets and in the process healing herself. It starts off with a crisp, first person narration. Within couple of pages, I could discover a little about "wounded" woman, Piper / Earleen and her inner voice (sometimes some humour too!). The author used cleverly italics to indicate that inner voice which made reading easy. Slowly I was drawn to the plot and made it quite difficult not to involve with Helen, Tucker and Lillian.

The alternating first and third person narration, italics for inner voice, beautiful passages, picking the left-out threads from previous chapter and interconnecting with current chapter made it worth to read.  

There are so many beautiful quotes from the author and my favourite is

"It's not always the distance of a trip that determines its value. Sometimes the best trips are only as far as the circumference of your heart".

Did I mention there was sprinkled humour everywhere waiting to be discovered? My favourite one is:

Lucy looked up at her aunt with eyes dark enough to be called black, and always appearing darker still when contrasted against her pale hair. "That is not what mama said. She said bad things happened to good people all the time".

Helen blew out a puff of smoke and put her arm around Sara. "Well then. We'll just have to try very hard not to be too good, then."

Before I knew it, I was pushing Piper to discover the secrets and enjoying the world with Helen's eyes. Towards the end I was more keen than Piper to discover the secrets....