One of the saddest facts about my sad life is that I don’t read a lot of books. Ask anyone on the street whether this is indeed a sad thing, and they will definitely agree. Especially if you tend to hang around bespectacled folks who carry jholas and attend seminars. Another sad thing is that when I do get around to reading a book that has nothing to do with my subject (history, not gaming!), I can’t find the proper adjective to put before “review”. Maybe reading a few more books would have given me ideas. Ah well.
Anyhow, if there’s one exception to my sad state of existence, it is Chetan Bhagat. He and I go back a long way, back to my school days. It’s too late (2:30AM to be exact) and anyhow not the right blog post to discuss my long history of interaction with the man and his literature. What I do wish to discuss though, is a specific book called One Indian Girl.
Most book reviews would give a bit of background about what the book is all about, how it fits into the genre and the age and how Bhagat has been evolving. But let’s skip all that. Instead, let’s jump directly into what I found interesting and what I did not. Because, you know, context is boring.
To begin with, the author tries to break new territory by situating himself in the mind of a female protagonist. Bhagat’s stories tend to be in first-person singular (except the sex scenes, when things definitely go “weeeeee”), and writing in first person female singular is no mean task. For one thing, you have to deal with the stereotypes that already exist in your mind regarding the other sex. Next, breaking away from them inevitably leads you into the counter-stereotypes that are created by movements like feminism. Trying to balance the two requires research and a sympathetic understanding of the fact that men and women, equally, prone to being individuals with their own distinctive traits. And from there you can weave the world of your protagonist, its supporting cast, its flaws and glories, its plot and its twists, and so on.
I’ve faced this problem, though you, the reader, don’t need to know where or why. Suffice it to say that I stumbled at the point where the individual breaks out of the stereotype, and gains a life of her own. Bhagat insures against this by meticulously interviewing a number of women. Does he run surveys ? Nope. He simply goes after the women who are closest to him and gets information about their experiences.
This makes for two qualifications to whatever he may have gleaned. One, as the Marxists will tell you, is that Bhagat being a member of the upper middle class, would inevitably gather information from upper middle class women. This, however, is not a big stumbling block if you intend to write about middle class women. The second, and more problematic issue, is that women may not open up about things that they typically wont’ discuss with men. Okay, your wife or girlfriend might. But beyond them (and one or two very close female friends) most won’t be willing to talk so openly about “matters” as they would be willing to with a woman. Even if they wanted to. Why ? Because many such issues may be embarrassing, difficult or traumatic in a way that “only women would understand.”
Be that as it may, what does Bhagat achieve? His research leads him to craft a character called Radhika. She is a middle class Punjabi girl with a management background. In other words, she is the exact opposite of the protagonist of Five Point Someone, one who is as close to Bhagat in terms of existence as can be possible. This is a wise decision, since reducing the number of variables makes it easier to feel at one with the character you’re creating. It also allows him to claim that his work is a comparison of the different reactions that men and women face under similar circumstances. All this adds a modicum of credibility to the overall premise.
Moving from background to the actual events, though, raises some very important questions. Radhika is seen as an overachiever with very little social life and even lesser experience with men. That, prior to her bagging a prize job at Goldman Sachs and flying off to New York to smash the glass ceiling. Here we face the first problem. All of Bhagat’s stories have been based in India. Okay, so some parts of Three Mistakes of my life may have been situated outside, ditto with Half Girlfriend, but mostly it’s been India. This is important, since Indian readers, for all their love of the firang and the vilet, internalise Indians living in India more than any NRIism.
Radhika, however, hardly ever returns to India. When she does, she is completely cut off from Indian society. Yeah, so her mom keeps nagging her about marriage. And she has periodic complexes about her sister. But that’s it. You hardly hear of a single truly Indian character in India with whom Radhika interacts. This lack of an Indian setting threatens to turn the story into the equivalent of a Karan Johar film.
Beyond the risk of aloofness, this also raises the ghost of context. It’s no secret that Indian society doesn’t take kindly to its women. Naturally then, the impediments facing a girl in India would be much more than those facing one living in the States. At the same time, these would be experiences that Indian women would not want to open up about when speaking to a man (the point I made earlier). So could it be that Bhagat could not get the information about the problems faced by women in India from Indian women ? Did this force him to locate the story in an exotic setting devoid of the various ills that plague Indian society ?
In fact, Bhagat’s use of society is sharply attenuated. Our protagonist goes through life without facing a single issue of sexual harassment, molestation, stalking or eve-teasing. Except for a rather blatant case of misogynism in the boardroom (which seems sort a face-saving gesture on the part of Bhagat), there is no trace of the problems faced by women, either in India or in the US. Hence, Radhika emerges as an equal of men in a manner that does not reflect actual society. This makes for comfortable reading for men (including myself) who are not affected by such issues, yet in hindsight Radhika does appear to much of a man in the eyes of society.
So what issues does she face ? The prime one, expectedly, is that of marriage. A nagging mother and an inherent sense of proving herself worthy of being a wife and a mother plague Radhika’s conscience (and phone calls). Her sister, as the arranged-marriage girl of the family, acts as a template which Radhika must follow regardless of what she achieves in her professional life. Failing to find love on her own eventually leads her to give in, which culminates in the plot finale.
A second issue is that of her physique. This issue is more easily solved and once she regularly has sex, her self-image improves. In fact, Bhagat is mature enough to show that with growing sexual maturity, she both realises the self-control required and also the pointlessness of the traditional mores of self-controlled chastity. What emerges is a pragmatic woman who knows what she wants out of sex, and is not afraid to ask (or gently force) her partner into cunnilingus. At the same time, she is ready to reciprocate and is open about her desires (or lack thereof) of sexual feelings at any given time. Bhagat, consciously or sub-consciously, breaks down what had turned into a criticism of his work – that his female characters tended to be one-trick ponies when it came to sex, being shy before seeking out sex and essentially letting men take control. (His last work, Half Girlfriend, broke this trend to some extent but only partially).
Another sign of maturity is his handling of sex scenes. Bhagat’s writing is not erotica, and he does not even try to step into the realm of female erotica. Despite this, his handling of the scenes is more mature and detailed. No longer are bed scenes put forth in the final paragraphs of a chapter and left hanging, the next chapter beginning at the end of the coital session. In OIG, Bhagat takes time and effort to describe foreplay and coitus. Most importantly, he uses this to show the character traits and sexual evolution of his protagonist. Given that the protagonist is female, this is all the more commendable.
The choice of lovers is less so. Both her lovers (and her arranged would-be-husband) are Indian, though they belong to three different communities. The surprising part is that barring the last, they are placed in foreign surroundings. Couldn’t Radhika have found love outside the subcontinental diaspora. Bhagat gives no plausible explanation for this, but one has to presume that with his prime character being a woman, it made sense for her to deal with Indian men, thus giving an element of familiarity. Also, perhaps, it would help assuage the Indian male ego!
Their behaviour, too, is somewhat predictable. Thankfully, here Bhagat makes the predictable work for him. Not unnaturally, Radhika seeks to be a wife and a mother. Her first lover (a Bengali, gah!) wishes her to be that, but without her job. Her second lover wishes her to be his lover, but not his wife or his kids’ mother. This contradiction, where being a wife and a working professional come into conflict, are borne out by the two relationships Radhika goes through. To Bhagat’s credit, she is shown to be sympathetic to both, and tries her best to salvage what she can. Yet she eventually has to walk away, either on her own or because she is pushed out.
This makes her realise that neither of the two aspects need contradict the other. More importantly, she realises that she need not put up a timeframe for marriage, and thus accept one or the other. This realisation dawns when she is preparing to marry her arranged groom, and both exes turn up to woo her back. Radhika eventually decides that ultimately, what women want is also categorised by men and given in pre-determined platters for them to accept. What she really wants, though, to combine all the different aspects of professional and personal life, is something no man could offer her at the moment. She follows through on her realisation.
The way Bhagat puts it across, as always, is mesmerising. Reading the book across two plane flights, I could not help but be struck by the sheer un-putdown-ability of the book. Till the very end, her dilemmas speak to you as if they were your own. Without destroying the “her” in the protagonist, the author manages to put you in her shoes and conveys the confusions. Till the very end, you cannot decide what she would choose. The final decision may seem dramatic and a wee bit ridiculous, but it takes Bhagat to steer it away from the shores of both stereotypes and raw feminism towards the fabled isle of the perfect climax.
Yet even in all this, there is a minor gripe. Radhika seems to put her personal problems before her professional life, even though it is this professional life which she uses as a bargaining chip against marriage pressure. She changes jobs when one relationship sours, and it takes her bosses to keep her on the job. One can understand that bosses treat valuable employees with utmost care, but then who is she to treat her career in such cavalier fashion ? This, in fact, smacks more of elitism that anything else, since a middle class girl would never give up her job (unless pressurised by marriage, pressure which Radhika staunchly resists).
Yet even in all this, there is a minor gripe. Radhika seems to put her personal problems before her professional life, even though it is this professional life which she uses as a bargaining chip against marriage pressure. She changes jobs when one relationship sours, and it takes her bosses to keep her on the job. One can understand that bosses treat valuable employees with utmost care, but then who is she to treat her career in such cavalier fashion ? This, in fact, smacks more of elitism that anything else, since a middle class girl would never give up her job (unless pressurised by marriage, pressure which Radhika staunchly resists).
To conclude then, One Indian Girl ticks the usual boxes with panache. The storytelling is superb, the moral dilemmas and emotional problems are brought out and held together with superb skill and the ending is marvellous. Where he breaks new territory, the results are somewhat mixed. Radhika is a relatable character, her problems are very real and her solutions are human and commendable at the same time. But the societal problems faced by women are not highlighted. It is almost as if she does not want to tell me, the male reader, those problems lest I judge her. Again, the setting and her attitude to her job are distractions that try their hardest to break the connect the reader feels towards the protagonist. Bhagat manages to create a lively, courageous and lovable girl, but one in the wrong place and too few and too predictable scars.