One Indian Girl by Chetan Bhagat

One Indian Girl is nothing special. Written by a man but narrated as a women, the main character is heavily idolized and the internal conflict she goes through doesn’t evenly match with her external performance. Chetan Bhagat has written this novel to show the world where he stands on the issue of feminism and it is written as a Bollywood script so surely he aims to make a movie out of it too as he is doing with his other novels. Apart from that, this novel is beautifully crafted piece of work which takes you to a journey of love, hatred, seduction, jealousy, stress and many beautiful and heartbreaking moments in a woman’s life and her way to deal with it. The novel highlights the gender discrimination avertedly citing many of the social taboos in existence in Indian society like, the want of a boy child in the family, the “must marry” rule for a girl, higher education and high paying jobs are only for boys and girls should devote herself to her family and kids than work and money. This novel like his previous ones also portrays sexual details as an essential element and the changes in cities and scenarios which brings change in the character’s life also add freshness to the story every now and then. The characterization of “Minnie me” as Radhika’s alter ego adds fun in her otherwise boring monologues. I also realized some inspired storylines in the book, like the relationship between Neel and Radhika at the beginning resembles to George Clooney and Anna Kendrik from “Up in the Air”, also the breaking up on text message is similar. Debu being and notorious ex coming to Radhika’s wedding and trying to convince her to elope with him is a common scene in lots of Bollywood movies. In a nutshell, sometimes boring and unnecessarily emotional, sometimes funny and beautiful moments, “One Indian Girl” surely takes you one a ride full of love, emotions, craziness, confusion & heartbreaks and will end up turning you into a feminist.

Story (Spoiler Alert)

The start of the story sets in Goa, where Radhika, an investment banker in Goldman Sachs, is getting an expensive destination wedding in Goa with Brijesh, software engineer at Facebook. The story begins with marriage chaos, starting with unavailability of rooms in the hotel for all the guests. The writer, portrays the main character as a strong independent lady, analyzing and solving the problems by herself and also narrating the story. She is different from the women we see every day and she is very successful so the writer warns the readers assuming to be of patriarchal mind set may not like her. The programs in marriage ceremony, meeting of brides and bridegrooms and the awkwardness of an arranged marriage is beautifully crafted and gives a good start to the story. Followed by bachelor and bachelorette parties and all the craziness is fun. Then comes Debu into the story, Radhika’s ex-lover from her New York days. He flies to Goa and starts stalking her in her marriage. She finally agrees to meet him in the gym and they talk about their New York days.

Radhika after completing her MBA joins Goldman Sachs, New York. The new city is very lonely for a low self-esteemed Radhika until she meets Debu, in a friends get together. They both become friends soon as Debu uses his charms praising Radhika for her beauty and smartness and desperate Radhika falls for it in no time. Being sister to an extremely beautiful Aditi, Radhika has been always over shadowed and now when she finds a man praising her, she wants nothing more but Debu to make a move towards her. They soon start dating. And one day when she invites Debu to her apartment in excuse to see her sister’s picture they end up having sex. The writer details all the foreplay and intimateness which is fun to read. Radhika soon gets a permanent position in the distress debt team, the toughest section in the Goldman Sachs and gets busy with her work. Soon they realize they have very few time for seeing each other, so they decided to move in together. Debu, working in an advertising company earns relatively less and stays with two other roommates’ moves with Radhika in her apartment. Everything is fun at first, sex is awesome but slowly things start to crumble. Radhika’s mom starts arguing with her for her marriage while Debu wants a stable career for him first. He starts cutting off expenses and ignores relationships and marriage talks with Radhika. Finally Debu gets a big promotion and Radhika throws him a huge party hoping to bring positivity in their relationship. Soon after, Radhika gets a huge bonus of $150K apart from her salary which shakes Debu. He starts comparing and get annoyed to the fact that she earns so much. Their relationship only worsen when he doesn’t show up on her office party and leads to an argument about his job and seriousness towards the relationship. Radhika shows her desire for him to propose her but she stalls saying that he wants to be secure in his job first. One day when Radhika is having a work related conference call, Debu over hears her and criticize her work which leads to another argument where he says that she can’t be a good wife or a mother and hints for break up. Radhika tries to save the relationship with all her might but Debu states the fact that he wants his wife to be a housewife and will only accepts Radhika if she leaves her job. She disagrees with Debu’s view towards working women and leave for work. That same day Debu breaks up with Radhika over a text message. She cannot endure the break up and starts trying desperate moves to get him back but she only gets hurt with every move she try. Her condition only worsen and she finally realizes that being with Debu is better than any career or money. So she decides to quit everything and but flowers and ring to propose Debu. He already moved out so she goes to his old place and with a plan to give him a surprise appear at his bedroom door without warning only to find Debu sleeping with another girl. She feels pathetic and low, she drinks till she pass out and cry whenever sober. She files resignation but viewing her dedication and excellence in her work, Goldman Sachs decides to transfer her to Hong Kong instead, as it would help her resolve her situation. She tries getting back with Debu till the last hour but he keeps ignore her, so she toss the phone into the river and leaves New York for good.

The story shifts back to Goa, where Debu begs Radhika to be back with him. He even proposes her the idea that they can swap the grooms and the wedding need not to be cancelled. She tries to ignore Debu and get more close to Brijesh, but cannot focus completely. They go on a bike ride, drink beer, smoke weed and get into trouble when the police catches them with weed. During all this craziness, a new character is introduced, Neel. Neel starts texting her, leaning about her wedding and flies to Goa that same day and they soon bump into each other.

The story then again sets in past, this time Hong Kong. After arriving Hong Kong, Radhika gets herself fully resolved into work to avoid Debu’s memories but soon get nostalgic when the work is over. So when Neel, a senior partner in her department offers her to work with him in a secret project in Philippines, she accepts it without thinking twice. They slowly bond and Radhika finds a getaway in Neel from Debu’s memories. Neel also turns every stone upside down to comfort Radhika. He even cancels a great business prospect with Japanese investor for a joke they make insulting Radhika being a woman in distress debt department. As the Philippines deal close, they open up with each other. Neel shares about his unsatisfactory marriage life and she shares her heartbreaking New York love story. And in all those emotions and shots of champagne they have sex. And this time too, the writer has detailed every bit of foreplay and sexual intercourse. Radhika feels extremely guilty for sleeping with her boss and decides to pretend it never happened. Later when Neel confesses that it was one of the most special moments in his life, she shows her indifference. Neel soon gets her into another project with him. In between Radhika meets with Neel’s wife and children. While Radhika is still struggling to get over Debu, Neel confess his love towards her in a text message. They start to sleep in their every business trip and Neel got her into a lot of trips with him. He confessed his love again and again but Radhika never reciprocates her love. One day Neel come over to Radhika’s apartment to stay with her where she confronts that he is using her just for sex. They have an argument and Radhika ends up saying that she loves him too. She takes a short vacation and travels home to India, where her mother compels her to agree for a marriage and they agree to wait a year more. She shares the idea of marriage with Neel, but he opposes that. He supports her carrier and their affair to stay as it is. But when Radhika shows her desire to be a wife, a mother, Neel replies that she is not meant to be a mother, which breaks her heart and she kicks him out of her apartment and cries all night. She applies for resignation but Neel convinces her to take a transfer to London and she agrees with a condition that he won’t be in contact with her again. Radhika moves to London and soon her mom visits her there. Her mom hunts boys for her and shortlist some only to be rejected by Radhika until they come across Brijesh’s profile. She first talks with him in skype and later meet in New York. The only thing she hates about Brij

esh is his name and her mother insists this to be a good match and she finally accepts.

The story returns back to Goa, where Neel is apologizing to Radhika for his behavior in the past. He shows his divorce papers with his wife and proposes Radhika to marry him. He says that he has a chartered plane ready and they can escape any time she wants. She asks for time to think and returns to wedding where she finds Debu who informs her that, he has already talked with his parents and they are on the way. Though emotionally shaken by all those events happening around Radhika tries to focus on the dance practice for sangeet ritual but cannot focus and she breaks down and starts crying instead. It’s already over her endurance limit. She decides to talk with Brijesh about this and proposes him to cancel the wedding. Brijesh request her to think it over and leaves her. She thinks all night and come up with an idea. She decides to bring the boys face to face. She texts Neel and Debu to meet her at 5 am in the café. Neel and Debu try to compete with each other and convince Radhika to choose one over another but Radhika says that she won’t choose either because deep down they have another face which will show up in future and hurt her.  She ask them both to leave and then meet Brijesh and tells him everything that is happening around. Brijesh is stunned hearing all that but agrees to put away the past. But Radhika insists on cancelling the wedding. She finally talks with her family and then with Brijeshs’ which gets totally awkward and chaotic. Finally Brijesh helps her out and the wedding is cancelled.

Radhika then travels around beautiful cities and after 3 months catch up with Brijesh in San Francisco. They talk about their life since then and Radhika even offers to help him with work. They decide to go for Arijit Singh’s concert later in the evening.

(Do comment how you think about it.)