Is it sinful to enjoy popular literature? Is it an intellectual equivalent of bingeing on processed carbohydrate rich snacks, to the cause of momentary pleasure, yet ultimately to the detriment of one's literary health. May be. However, given the choice against bingeing on the latest webseries, I feel reading light literature comes out quite healthy. So, with that self justification, I must make my commendation known for "Those Pricey Thakur Girls" by Ahuja Chauhan.
Despite the catchy, if somewhat salacious, book title, the novel is more about family dynamics. Infact, about intertwined family dynamics. The girls, having names starting with A, B, C, D and E, are introduced early, but the story revolves mostly around the penultimate one, and the youngest, to some extent. While The Zoya Factor was an out and out chick-lit, this one is more similar to A Suitable Boy, which was recently adapted quite well into a six part Netflix Series. The similarity exists in a form of a number of story arcs, and a large number of characters, who all have well fleshed out roles; characters we sort of care about. It is much thinner than A Suitable Boy, and therefore the scope for the fleshing out of the characters was even lesser. Within that small wiggle space, the author has done a good job. It is very hard to keep the author from injecting oneself into one's protagonist. Hence, there is a danger in writing multiple real characters, that one may slip into all of them, resulting in a sort of sameness. Averting that has been accomplished quite skilfully. Then there is the similarity in the overall political land scape in the background. While A Suitable Boy saw much of the Zamindari Abolition debate, and the nascent communalism, TPTG features the investigation into the 1984 Riots as one of its main story arcs. There is an important difference though. A Suitable Boy kept us on tenterhooks about what will happen, and how. This one could not conceal the what, but still, the how is a wonderful journey of discovery. So overall, it was a nice exercise in world building, and it would have been a waste if we did did not see more of the girls and the Thakurs. "The House that BJ Built" by the same author, seems to be featuring the next generation of TPTG, and it is on my reading list now!
