World | India
Cheeky new writing breaks shackles
Bold and unabashed 'chick lit' heroines find an audience in India with a strong empathy.
- By Rama Lakshmi, Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service
- Published: 01:14 December 1, 2007
- Author Advaita Kala says the heroine in her book Almost Single is witty, outspoken and happily single; Kala's book is part of the wave of "chick lit" gaining popularity in a country where marriages are usually arranged by parents and women are expected to sacrifice their own aspirations for family.
- Image Credit: The Washington Post
New Delhi: Bookstores in the country are stocking up on a new kind of English-language novel - the kind in which twentysomething urban women put their careers first, ridicule arranged marriages and wrestle with weight gain.
The internationally trendy fiction genre known as "chick lit," popularised by Bridget Jones's Diary and Sex and the City, now has an Indian avatar.
In a country where marriages are usually arranged by parents in consultation with astrologers, and where women are traditionally expected to sacrifice their own aspirations in the interest of family, the cheeky chick-lit heroines are being embraced by readers who see the lighter side of Indian mores.
The plots reveal Indian city-dwellers confronting the amusing vagaries of daily life - a working woman puts her family astrologer's number on speed dial on her cellphone; another woman dumps trash on a boy her mother sends for an arranged marriage; a couple's romance blossoms through a series of Post-it notes stuck on a car in a parking lot; a mother bemoans her bad karma because her 29-year-old daughter is still single.
Irreverent entrant
Indian chick lit is the latest and most irreverent entrant into the world of English-language fiction. But publishers and critics say it is also a reflection of the growing confidence among women in Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and elsewhere.
"This is the story of the new Indian woman in the cities. She is single, has a career and is willing to have fun, take risks and find a man her way, and not necessarily her family's way. It is a woman we have only read about in books from the Western countries and now, suddenly we are finding her on Indian roads," said V. K. Karthika, the publisher and chief editor at Harper Collins India, who launched Almost Single by debutante writer Advaita Kala. The book has sold 10,000 copies in the past four months and is now printing a fourth time, a huge success by the standards of English-language fiction in India.
In the past five years, a handful of novels geared toward young women, including Girl Alone and Piece of Cake, have drawn a following in India. But the success of Almost Single has revealed the larger, untapped market for a girls-having-fun genre.
"A generation ago, marriage was the only route to independence from parental control in India. Now women are working, living alone in the cities, hanging out with women friends, drinking, dating and having fun in spite of the enormous social pressure to get married," said Kala, 30, author of Almost Single. "They inhabit a world where women enjoying a drink in the bar are not social outcasts. They are not tragic figures because they are single."
Kala has a liberal arts degree from Berry College in Georgia and works as a job trainer for the Taj group of hotels in India.
Balancing act
The heroines of chick lit skillfully balance cultural traditions with 21st-century lifestyles, trying to observe fasting rituals while adhering to the Atkins or South Beach diet, choosing to hang out with gay friends or facing a mother's disapproval.
"I like such books because they resemble my life and the conversations I have with my friends and parents," said Jyoti Trehan, a 25-year-old advertising executive who was browsing a New Delhi bookstore recently.
Kala's protagonist works in a five-star hotel, smokes and drinks, and turns to her two friends with problems involving her nagging boss or with her mother, who gives her "umbilical cord whiplash".
"I am keenly aware that my book represents a sliver of Indian society, but it is a growing sliver," said Kala, who says she learned what it was to be poor during her student years in the United States, when she cleaned dorm toilets and had to choose between a meal and a large Pepsi.
Now, Kala is single and lives with her parents in New Delhi. She wears a ruby ring that her family astrologer recommended for creativity. She says he predicted her book's success and forecasts that she will get married "very soon".
Recently, a group of 40 Mary Kay representatives from the United States were presented with copies of Kala's book while staying in a New Delhi hotel. One of the women, Jennifer Isenhart, contacted Kala and asked her to sign 25 copies so that she could take them to friends back home.
"The book showed me that young women are the same everywhere. They have the same problems of boyfriends and bosses. They drink coffee, love to shop and have fun," said Isenhart, 28. "To enjoy life is empowerment, too."
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