The book has a gripping start, marred by an off-putting smattering of clichéd attempts at humour. The love story begins without any build-up of character, and the protagonist seems a thinly veiled representation of the author.
In an acknowledgment before the book starts (the first, longest, and most emphatic acknowledgement), Bhagat thanks his readers for making him “India’s most loved writer”. Such an expression of gratitude confers little worthiness on the thanked, other than to be susceptible to a fad and able to buy a book, but it is a heart-felt compliment for the author himself, a malodorous waft of arrogance with which to begin a book. These days, Bhagat describes himself as a ‘motivational speaker’ which is an unsurprising trajectory for an author with a penchant for oversimplification and a paucity of modesty.
Krish, the protagonist, starts as a smarmy MBA graduate who joins Citibank in a highly prestigious position, but wishes to be a writer. By chapter 3 he is defined by hubris and a lack of nuance.
My impressions are clearly clouded by cultural ignorance. I’m unable to identify with the characters or able to tell if the literary representation of his parents and relations and fiancé’s relations are realistic depictions of the various cultures, or whether they are, as they seem to me, superficial caricatures designed primarily for humour and narrative ease.
“...Well if the daughter can’t resist me, neither can the mother…” is the sort of immodesty that pervades, unmodulated by irony, undiluted by any sincere self-deprecation. This style may well not be individual but cultural, if his depictions of his relatives are to be believed, with their proclivity to flagrantly brag about their wealth and material attainments.
I am enjoying this book: it reads easily and develops many little conflicts and resolutions and portrays a colourful array of personalities across the pages, but I do not identify with any of them, and that doesn’t seem merely cultural. The way Krish handles himself reminds me not of Indians I’ve met in engineering or science but of North American management consultants. His writing seems designed to achieve maximum publication income, rather than convey emotional truth or strive for profundity.
The culture being portrayed here by Bhagat seems very much like the USA’s exultation of individual immodesty in which it is expected, and even appreciated, to preen one’s self, without irony, loudly and at every opportunity. Such behaviour in Australia or the UK or Germany invokes nausea and distrust and invites ridicule rather than reverence… I would be surprised if it weren’t so also in India.
