The 3 Mistakes of my Life:
1. Having read 'Five Point Someone' and thinking that his subsequent works would be as good as FPS.
2. Anyone can have a rough day. The next novel will be better.
3. Will it ever be? Only time, money and effort waste.
Prior to the launch of One Indian Girl, CB had said that this novel was going to be a take on feminism and that he had done extensive interviews to get the character's perspective right. He had also said that he has gone one step further by saying that he has got himself waxed to feel the pain of women. It gave me a sliver of hope that OIG might be different from his previous works and that impelled me to pre-order the book through Amazon. I am not sure whether he felt the pain or not but after reading this piece of futility, he certainly waxed my heart to the extent that my lub-dub was screaming 'Can it get any worser than this'?
CB has always been a bad writer. He has himself acknowledged it publicly and defended that his style of writing is for the 'mass market'. And it is true. It was his simple, easy and relatable kind of portrayal in FPS that made me to expect and await eagerly for the new arrivals as his demotic way of putting things was completely refreshing from his contemporaries. In other words, his enchorial and non-literary way of sketching out the details in his books is, sorry was, his USP. It's been more than a decade since his first novel hit the shelf and people would have expected that he might have honed up his writing skills. Unfortunately, his standard has been deteriorating gradually to the point that it's utterly pointless to even bring up the topic.
Being an IIT-IIM graduate and having worked in the reputed Goldman Sachs as an Investment Banker, it is a natural corollary that CB would have his own views on feminism. Sadly, that was not the case to be. Other than Amazon's razor prompt delivery, OIG is a trashy take on feminism solely intended only to be made into a tacky Bollywood movie by selling his rights to the highest bidder. CB has shamelessly flipped the definition of Feminism from Wikipedia instead of giving his own touch to the heavy term. The most regrettable and unforgivable part was that he did not even acknowledge that he had lifted it. As I was reading the book, I had an inkling that the definition may have been copied from some web site because of the usage of the words which was completely at odds with CB's style. Never in my wildest of the wildest imaginations I knew that it would be an exact copy (Nice oxymoron, na?) from Wiki.
The synopsis of the book can be summarised as Radhika slept with many people during her career and is full of insecurities about her own identity which she wanted to play it down by being independent and successful in her vocation. On the day of her wedding, is she going to marry one of those men or the one to whom she is betrothed?
CB has written the sex scenes more elaborately than focussing on the feminism aspect which is reduced to a mere two line dialogue at the fag end of the book. No one is saying that OIG should have been edifying or uplifting. But, it shouldn't have been so demoralizing to the already self-conscious girls in our country who may take a bad example in Radhika. If CB hadn't said OIG is centered around feminism, then it would have been just another of his previous work - Open. Read. Close. Forget. But, it is that he had given so much trumpet calls before the launch of the book that it seems now that everything is a marketing gimmick.
It is extremely difficult to forge an impactful story with such a reality as Feminism. But, it is definitely not impossible. If CB says that it cannot be done, then he should really watch movies like 'English Vinglish' or '36 Vayathinile' where the protagonist defies all odds, becomes successful and gains the respect of everyone with liberal doses of pristine comedy. In this case, OIG is nothing but a raunchy, decadent and provides a facade of entertainment on the veneer of feminism.
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