One Indian girl book review – It is about a young First class banker Radhika Mehta who works for the Goldman Sachs, one of the leading investment banks with an excellent pay. She is a feminist in nature who has an opinion over everything which is not encouraged in the Indian society. She is not fair complexioned unlike her sister but beautiful with brains. She has a orthodox narrow minded Indian mother who keeps asking her to get married and get settled in life. For her age,Radhika earns a lot of money most importantly more than men do, which again breaks the Indian stereotype. She wants to live her life like she wishes to, but the men in her life control her from living so.
After so many complications in her past love life with two different guys,Debashish Sen and Neel, she agrees to get married, a typical arranged marriage with Brijesh Gulati. They plan for destination wedding at Goa. Big fat Indian weddings generally tend to go on for days and also she agrees to it with a confused mind. To add up more confusion, we can say there is a blast from the past, two days prior to her wedding with Brijesh. Radhika is someone who is not worth losing, and now she has to choose between her past lovers and her current fiancé. Radhika does something unpredictable. To know how Radhika came out from the dramatic mess read the book One Indian girl. Radhika Mehta is indeed a courageous modern Indian girl.
“Say that to my mother. She stays up at night wondering about who will marry me with this skin colour.”
― Chetan Bhagat, ONE INDIAN GIRL.
Chetan bhagat is a well known English author in India.
To be honest, I would have enjoyed the book more if there was a better story or a better plot. The story is very unremarkable or unexceptional. Personally When I was reading it , all i could imagine was another Hindi movie ready to be made like the author’s other books 2 states and Half girlfriend. Although 2 states was a good book which was worth reading. This book has satisfied all the aspects of a bollywood movie, say dialogues ,humour, location, Romance, and most importantly drama. In my opinion A novel must be more than just a pen script and not the routine style of stories.
The men in the book have a Cliché character, the three men fall into three different given categories who tend to force the protagonist to live according to their own will and this creates a suffocating situation for that Indian girl. We can also see it is not just the guys giving her problems but her mother too is portrayed in a unpleasant manner. The mother is constantly worried about her daughter’s marriage, skin tone,salary being higher than men. There is a constant battle between her modern views and the rigid life fixed for women.There was good characterisation for Radhika, the protagonist but she did lack self esteem, despite being successful she fell for every guy who wanted her. She could not say No which made her look desperate.
One Indian girl did have positives! Chetan Bhagat for the first time has written it from a girl’s voice which was something I was looking forward for. And he did pretty much justice to it.The way he portrayed an Indian girl not just in an ordinary manner but in a very courageous twenty first century manner was brilliant. It made the male dominated society think about the problems Indian women face. Starting from feminism it finally gave a humanist thought. It made us realise it wasn’t the men we have to fight for female equality but humans in general. Although that good conclusion was spoilt a little bit in the after climax. Radhika’s behaviour did not prove the point.
You can definitely read the book once, might change some people’s thoughts and views. Book did well in the market because the author has already established some reputation and people would sort for his books despite the story being not so great.
The best quote from the book is,
“You only need the light when it is burning low Only miss the sun when it starts to snow. How”
― Chetan Bhagat, one Indian girl.
TITLE – One Indian Girl
AUTHOR – Chetan Bhagat
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED –2016
PUBLISHER- Rupa and co
PAGE COUNT -280
GENRE – Fiction, Romance
