ONE INDIAN GIRL, CHETAN BHAGAT
Hi, I am Radhika Mehta and I am getting married this week.
I work at Goldman sachs, an investment bank. Thank you for reading my story. However, let me warn you. You may not like me too much.
One, I make a lot of money.
Two, I have an opinion on everything.
Three, I have had a boyfriend before. Okay, maybe two.
Now if I was a guy, you would be okay with all of this. But since I am a girl, these three things don’t really make me too likeable, do they?
So “one Indian girl” is the seventh fictional novel and ninth overall book by the Indian author Chetan Bhagat.I’ve read all the books by him, so I was so excited to read this when I finally had it from my friend. But to be frank this book stands way below my expectations, like way below.
“One Indian girl” is about Radhika the protagonist about 25, who is rich, modern, stylish and technically one of those i-don’t-care category of girls. So she’s stuck in a difficult situation that to choose between 3 men.
1. A self-confessed bore and cricket and bollywood enthusiast.
2. A Bengali communist with an unfortunate penchant for the word “baby”.
3. A highly desirable but entirely inappropriate older man.
This books tells us nothing but old cliché bollywood story packed with old-school rubbish like
1. Punjabi wedding
2. Comedy sequence with bumbling aunties
3. Sex on erotic beach
4. Locations in New York, Hong kong and London.
Women with low self-esteem issues do strange things, and I’m sure there are lots of high-achieving women out there heartbroken about men who do not deserve their attention. The problem is that Bhagat never tell us why she is hung up about men so unworthy of her.
People like Radhika’s lovers do not actually exist in the real world. It’s like they are in the story just to make Radhika’s life more and more difficult. I mean what’s the point.
And then there is this mother whose only life time goal is find her daughter a rich husband and is also ashamed of her daughter’s skin color, where’s the damn 21st century India.
The thing is that this is essentially a story of one woman’s battle against insecurity, an insecurity that stems from growing up in an unequal society.
Plus points: Chetan has written the book in his same informal simple language which is very helpful for beginners which is one of the main reasons why his former novels became bestsellers. The language is simple and refreshing and the binding is good and pages are of good quality.
I mean the author tried to write this whole book from a feminist point of view but he had totally failed to accomplish what he tried to achieve. Maybe, he thinks this is story of majority of Indian girls, but I am sorry to say, it is not. At least the title was right. The book is literally about one Indian girl
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