Right To Impress--Magic Of Technique

The magic of technique
Form and Style in Indian English Fiction
By Jagdish Batra.
Prestige Books.
Pages 190. Rs 600.
Reviewed by Rajbir Deswal
STYLE studies in English fiction, besides the theme, do exist in the contemporary fiction analysis scenario, but only so far as the West is concerned. In case of Indian English novels, there is acute dearth of such content on the library racks and catalogues. Jagdish Batra’s initiative in bringing out the present critique, which comprises write-ups by a score of specialists, should set the pace for appreciation and exploration of the postmodern scenario in style and narratology.

Socrates’ oft-quoted remark, almost having graduated into a truism with time, "As a man is, so is his speech", seems to be a byword for Batra who appears to be subscribing to this style as a concept immensely. His book focuses on myriad aspects in elaborating and examining the works of different Indian authors from R. K. Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand to Kiran Desai and Arvind Adiga. And the process is still on, if you address the macro-level, but largely individual pursuits in this direction are underway.

The question remains as to what impresses the reader of fiction most — theme or style? Plot or flow? Indulgence or suspense? Virtual, not-so-factual or factual fiction? Or, is it purely the subject matter for academics or the academia? Well, the present is bleak but future portends well, with the attempts being made by the likes of Alessandro Monti, Z. N. Patil, S. L. Paul, Vipasha Agarwal, Rekha Beniwal, Jyoti Singh, Monika Balyan Dahiya, Meenakshi, Geeta Goyal, Umed Singh, Priyanka Lamba, Urvashi Prabhat, Sumita Ashri, Jyoti Sheoran, Anita Dalal, Urmil Hooda and Narinder Kumar Saini. The present compilation has them all.

Batra throws light on the historical developments which turned simple concepts like style and plot structure into scientifically marked complex constructs of stylistics and narratology. Some leading novelists exhibit their typical characteristics in his judgement as: G.V. Desani being known for his verbal pyrotechnics; Anita Desai for her poetic prose; Arundhati Roy for her neo-nativisation of English; Salman Rushdie for his "chutnification" of language; Vikram Seth for his use of verse in fiction; and Kiran Desai for her stylistic flourishes.

Besides, some other equally capable novelists, who Batra mentions, include: Shashi Deshpande for her reflective style; Amitav Ghosh for the skilful focalisation of the narrator’s point of view; Rohinton Mistry for richness of language and imagery; Amit Chowdhuri for dispensing with the narrative in a novel without depending on the stream of consciousness either;`A0I. Allen Sealy for producing linguistic period piece in an avowedly indigenous "nama" (as in Baburnama) style; and Upmanyu Chatterjee for his use of pompous diction and Latinised construction.

International scenario in narratological studies is well represented by Italian scholar Alessandro Monti who very skillfully applies to the language used by Salman Rushdie in his novel Midnight’s Children, the Bakhtinian concept of a levelled and more democratic style, giving equal respect to the man at the helm and the man in the street; or Homi Bhabha’s postcolonial concern about the marginalised. Indeed, Rushdie’s "chutnification" of language as of history involves not only adding up spice but presenting a kind of potpourri in a more exotic form, transcending boundaries, which is the essence of the postmodern era.

Jyoti Sheoran finds Mulk Raj Anand’s use of slang, swear words, jargon of abuse, epithets of low life and verbal coinages taking him nearer his avowed purpose of evolving a language as rich and powerful as Irish English. Sumita Ashri describes narratives being of two types, namely Homodiegetic (narrator being present in the plot) Heterodiegetic (narrator being out of the plot). Studying Jhumpa Lahiri’s style, Shilpi Ahuja finds her "simple yet smart; sparing in words yet eloquent". Priyanka Lamba’s take on Chetan Bhagat firms up his position as the pioneer of those who understand and write essentially for the youth.

Arvind Adiga’s The White Tiger has an artful technique blending narration and description, reflection and revelation, if you believe Geeta Goyal. Monika Balayan-Dhaiya, while commenting on Anita Desai, lays more emphasis on vocabulary, syntax, morphology, grammar etc. However, this reviewer believes that quality and quantity of words used determines overall the aesthetic value of any piece of writing.

The book also dwells on a feature of narratology called "Narrative Thematics". Whereas Rekha Beniwal applies the spatial reading method to the south Indian woman writer Ambai’s fiction and charts the feminist streak, the author locates "home" as the structural principle in the story of Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss. Interestingly, theme and style combine in this category.

The compilation at hand traverses the road from style and plot, the main concerns of an uninitiated reader, to the technical aspects of stylistics and narratology — the area of study of a student of literature — with equal aplomb and should be useful to all those who wish to acquire insights into these enchanting domains, or wish to rely on clues to stylised writing.

KASHMIR BLUES: Deserted-Stolen Child's Search for her Birth Parents

Pleasurable read (In The Tribune today)
Kashmir Blues
By Urmilla Deshpande.
Tranquebar.
Pages 355. Rs 325.
Reviewed by Rajbir Deswal

YOU step out of your house with a purpose in mind, start encountering adventure and thrill with quite an indulgence or sorts, bump into myriad characters who start sharing their concerns with you by default or design; and you return home with a craving to re-live the experiences with a nostalgic pinch felt within, sums up the broad storyline of Urmila Deshpande’s Kashmir Blues.

If you are looking for finding a solution to the Kashmir problem, or if you are seeking information on insurgency, or even if you are vicariously and by way of fiction, attempting to "feel" the pain of Kashmir, then this book is definitely not meant for you. What the California-based writer has woven in her inimitable style is a personal quest that takes its shape in the most interesting scenarios obtaining largely in India. Kashmir does offer enough, but only in symbolic terms and allusions.

The fact of richness of Kashmir is manifest all over the book, taking into account its beauty and landscapes, people and their customs, trade and occupation, etc. But equally important is the lament looming large in the depiction of "Earth Paradise’s" lately "disturbed and distorted" predicament of which the author does not suggest a cure, and rightly so, for the fiction writer should not be found fiddling with facts that stare starkly enough.

Not that Urmila does not give out many facts about Kashmir but she does it only up to the extent they suit her plot. "Kashmir was once the jewel in the crown of India ... it could be that way again ... but only if all the issues were resolved ... though it is too late to reverse the damage done ...too late to re-educate the lost youth-mutilated by fanaticism, Islamic fundamentalism, economic devastation and a feeling of isolation..."

There is no central character in the novel around whom the plot revolves, rather nearly all of them make their appearance and look to be normal and not purpose-made. Naia living in Los Angles sets foot for India to find her "birth parents" with a photographer friend, Leon, after stumbling onto the fact of her being a "deserted-stolen" child.

The duo travels to Bombay and Delhi and finally to a village in North (Kashmir), where the War Lord in the making, Samaad, is as if waiting for them to guide their destiny while striving to save "from both the countries" his own inherited treasure of mines that produce Blue Sapphire.

Samaad, in fact, is the character in the novel who inspires mostly the positives, although he is placed in a situation where the likes of him are given to either insurgency or fundamentalist overtures. He is not only well educated but brainy too, and for whose blue eyes and mannerisms Maia is ready to fall in his arms. Being a Muslims himself, his clairvoyance in talking about Hindu scriptures and Lord Shiva and His "Third Eye", floors the likes of Leon and Maia.

Maia is just there with almost no action attributable to her own initiatives. She is addicted to drugs, and she loves Leon "just the way he was: manic, depressive, riddled with complexes and borderline OCD, and the most seeing photographer she had ever known".

Urmila has an interesting take on Bombay’s streets which have been "slept on, spat on, shat on, lived on, loved on, the stage of millions of little dramas, tragedies, comedies and romances". The writer is not charitable to Delhi either, when she describes, "shit lays about the streets, and then it dries up, and then it floats up into the air-that-we breathe".

Kashmir Blues involves a style not of keeping suspense and is thus a pleasurable read, although the fiction lovers always like the thrill. The writer is easy and comfortable with herself in weaving encounters of different tones and tenor at her given and subjective choice and selection.

The novel has its share of some flaws, too, when it comes to the technique. There are long pauses from one sequence to the other and a smooth transition is lacking which only the reader has to maneuver. Urmila’s very verbose style does good to her description and her recognition of observation, but it takes its toll on the readers interest which starts plummeting and dwindling. Also the novel does not relate to a specific time or period to which the reader can associate. This becomes all the more important while talking about Kashmir, because all the world has its eyes fixed on happenings on this Paradise on Earth!

When I looted in United Kingdom

Avenging theft
By: Rajbir Deswal
(In The Tribune today)
While setting foot for the UK, a senior member in our group cautioned, “Don’t go to wrong places for you will be in trouble!” The second piece of advice was in the form of a comment, but in a killing and chilling tone: “Some people have a compulsive habit of putting things in their pockets!”

For us this was not only too much, but too demeaning too. Yet, we pocketed the advice. I hadn’t then realised that I myself would become the victim of a near-robbery in an alien land.

I had a pouch ‘stolen’ from my not-so-inviting bag in Strathpeffer, Scotland. I noticed its loss when I needed to transfer the days’ photos, from the camera to the pen-drive, kept in the pouch which I couldn’t locate. I promptly announced a heist.

“What else was there in the pouch?” asked my curious wife. To this very natural query of hers (though I was expecting a quick reprimand too for my being ‘carefully callous’!) I ‘reported’ as if before the police: “Some tie pins, coat lapels, two pen drives, a Seattle-Needle souvenir and some coins worth eight or ten pounds!” Post haste I blamed the theft on the house-keeper.

With initial “tch-tchs’ of rubbishing my apprehensions of the involvement of the house-keeper, the investigation ensued: “But what would she need your cosmetic stuff for? Least the pen-drives!” I justified, “it had some change too!”

“O, come on, they’re professional people. The hotel management trusts them. And do you think they are going to question the house-keeper for your silly stuff; and fire her?” Wife suggested I didn’t make a report. I decided to eat the proverbial humble pie.

Next evening when we returned from Inverness, we found the house-keeper’s trolley in the corridor. I could not resist the temptation of ‘teaching her a lesson’ and straightaway rendered her haul of milk sachets poorer by a dozen, by a quick sleight of hand.

Reaching the room, the wife said she needed some tea bags. While trying to arrange them, I encountered the house-keeper in the corridor who greeted me in her typically Scottish accent, similar to us Haryanvis’ style of speaking the Queen’s English.

I asked her if she had some tea bags. “Yes, here we go!” She put some half-a-dozen on my palm and asked, “Do you need some milk too?” Well, I didn’t really, but something inside me made me forget all reasoning and honest intentions. “Yes!” I said and got almost a palmful.

While returning to my room, I tried to recall with sadistic pleasure, the expression on the lassie’s face, on finding a shrunken pile of milk-sachets. Having wound up the Scotland trip, when we reached London from where we had initially started, I found my ‘missing’ pouch. I narrated to our host the story and my sick mentality to take revenge on the ‘stealer’.

The host came up with a similar anecdote. He recalled the time when before migrating to the UK, he was cheated by a taxi-driver in New Delhi. He asked the latter for a match-box. Having lighted his cigarette, he removed half a dozen match-sticks, pocketed them, and returned the match-box.

The senior member in our group was right. Some people have a tendency to put things in their pockets. And some other meeker ones can be a tad revengeful too.

Whodunit??? INVESTIGATE!!!

Crime, be it local or international, has to be met with same standards, principles, norms and practices. The principle of optimum standard of proof has to be followed at all costs. Being a little extra vigilant will be good not only for the investigation but trial too.(The Tribune carries this artical today)
Rajbir Deswal
Crime is a fact of the human species, a fact of that species alone, but it is above all the secret aspect, impenetrable and hidden. Crime hides and by far the most terrifying things are those which elude us. — Georges Bataille
Investigation seeks to look beyond what meets the eye while crime investigation envisages and makes incumbent upon the seeker to dwell deeper into the skin of the mystery or issue at hand. While doing so, professionals are bound by certain legitimate, ethical and procedural instrumentalities under the due process of law.

It may seem to hinder the undesirable fast-forward mode of investigation to show quick results. However, it goes a long way in establishing the culpability of the accused beyond all shadows of doubt to prove the guilt to the hilt, thus enhancing the credentials of the investigating agency in the eyes of the judiciary.

In India, crime investigation is primarily vested with the police under section 156(1) of the Criminal Procedure Code as also by order of a magistrate vide section 156(3), who is empowered to take cognisance of an offence under Section 190. The Central Bureau of Investigation was initially handling economic offences involving frauds etc, but later it has been entrusted with other sensitive cases having serious ramifications in criminality. The National Investigation Agency was created in 2008 to exclusively tackle crimes of terror.

Crucial tasks

Investigation into crime warrants the police hurrying to the scene; protecting the site; informing concerned quarters on actionable information given out of the situation; sending for emergency services like ambulances; summoning the forensic experts and detectives; beginning to look for and collection of evidence; carrying out searches and effecting seizures; making witnesses join in; apprehending suspects followed by sequentially and chronologically documenting the entire process of investigation by writing case diaries and preparing judicial papers; and establishing the correct and unmistakable identity of the accused. These are some of the tasks that need immediate attention of the investigators, besides employing modern technologies, like cell phone interruption, clandestine recording, surveillance, etc.

Adhering to the internationally acceptable best practices is the crux of all that is modern, in the present-day scenarios of mutual interest and sustenance between nations. Crime having local and international ramifications has to be met with same standards, principles, norms and practices. The principle of optimum standard of proof has to be followed at all costs. Being a little extra vigilant will be good not only for the investigation but trial too.

Robert Peel, Father of police reforms in the UK, says, “It is common, we suppose, to all men, who find themselves involved in some unexpected and — as they think — undeserved difficulty or danger, to exhale the first impulses of vexation in reproaches against those, whose folly or wickedness have led to their embarrassment.” There may be circumstances, where tangible, direct or forensic evidence may not be found. Hence collecting enough circumstantial evidence to corroborate the commission of crime at the hands of suspect will always be met with appreciation and concern by the courts as against a flawed manufacturing of padded layers of guilt on the accused.

Investigation is a multi-directional activity that sees, foresees, imagines, suspects, but doesn’t think loud enough, since the dire straits of procedures restrict, and rightly so. A good investigator should keep the prosecution story in mind and also pre-suppose the defense side during the trial that will follow but it is desirable and advisable not to be unfair to the suspect or the accused, in trying to “fix him well.”

Denying the suspect his ‘Right to silence’; ‘ insulation against double jeopardy’; ‘right of private defense’; ‘acts done as sudden and grave provocation’; and above all, matters of privacy, including intrusion should not be lost sight of by the investigators. The Constitution of India guarantees every person right against self-incrimination under Article 20(3). The ‘Right to silence’ is well established and forcible intrusion into one’s mind. It made the Supreme Court of India declare the narco-analysis, brain-mapping and lie-detector tests as violation of such a right.

Classical example

The investigation should clearly bring out the occasion-cause-effect chain, into building up the corpus delicti. If a criminal act is incidental enough, not preceded with preparation, leading to its execution, followed by a transparent and unquestionable subsequent conduct, then trying to prove the guilt on the suspect may never succeed during the trial. The classical example to support and sustain this view point is of the experiment, when the baby-monkey was put under her feet by the mother-monkey, to gain some height, in a water filled glass jar, when the levels started reaching her nose and she began to apprehend and confront her own death right in her face.

Thus, a criminal’s predicament, mental disposition, plus any provable and scientific and biological inclination towards committing crime, should be also taken into consideration in assessing and assuming his culpability besides mens rea.

Comprehensive database

As for crime control, K. Koshy, former Director-General of Police, Bureau of Police Research and Development, says that a comprehensive database on wide ranging subjects like details of residents, criminal backgrounds, data on crime, stolen and abandoned vehicles, drug cases, money transaction and movements of persons can help in not only preventing and controlling but investigating crime.

The Village Crime Notebook, as envisaged by the Punjab Police Rules, if maintained properly and linked online with databases like Unique ID number, bank transactions, hotel occupation, BC Rolls, hue and cry notices, stolen vehicles and automobile registration details, accidents, if done on real-time basis, can detect patterns and track movement of criminals and suspicious persons, can help prevent common crimes and economic offences. The best example of this is the use of data mining techniques involving the COPLINK project in the US.

Proactive policing as in the New York City Police Department suggests proper locking and securing houses and buildings, burglar alarms, architectural and town planning designs to make crimes more difficult. If the Patrol Officer is sensitive to any unusual things in the area and probes it, many an untoward incident can be prevented. A classic example is the Broken Window approach suggested by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling. Prevention will largely depend on how civil society enjoins upon itself and follows self-discipline and the rule of law. Placing trust in the law enforcement agencies is of paramount importance. Otherwise, vigilante actions are sure to follow, howsoever bottled up or repressed a community may be.

In the sixties, the Police Youth Club system was introduced in the US, proactively targeting the potential offenders who exhibited signs of rebellion, even while being in school, to divert their energies to more creative activities like sports, games and social service. The Regional Employ-Ability Challenge (REACH) Project supported by the European Union and kids projects in Durham, UK, are other examples.

Important clues

Integration and availability of huge databases from public domains like payment of toll on highways, telephone call records, list of train and airplane reservations, hotel occupancy, purchase of vulnerable material like explosives, Ammonium Nitrate, etc and software to analyse and link these seemingly unconnected data can help the professionals more scientifically in the task of crime control. In the Parliament Attack case, cell phone calls analysis provided the most important clues.

Mafias of various shades and sizes exist the entire world over and their favourite indulgences include narcotics, currency, artifacts, body-shopping etc. Natural geographical features and political conditions make possible things like ‘Golden Triangles’ and ‘Silk-Routes’. Likewise, you can grow opium in Afghanistan; smuggle narcotics through Malaysia, Myanmar and Nepal; or even dump fake currency in India printed in Pakistan via Nepal, Indonesia and Malaysia.

An investigator has to be compassionate. He should have wide contacts and clear objectives besides ability to collect documents, preserve evidence, effect recoveries and assists in prosecution. He should take care to record witness statement and undo the suspects alibi. More important, he should be an expert in building up corpus dilecti. Investigators and crime-busters will have to start big that can be made small, but not always start with small, that cannot be made big, as it happened in the Arushi murder case.

The writer is the Inspector-General of Police, Criminal Investigation Department, Haryana

Summer Gifts:“लैला की उँगलियाँ, मजनू की पसलियां: गर्मियों के बेनजीर तोहफे !

By Rajbir Deswal

AS a child I often travelled to visit my elder sister married in Shamli (Uttar Pradesh). Though Punjabi food is a global phenomenon these days, the style and statement with which the UP-walas showcase their delicacies is no less interesting and mouth-watering, be it Mathura Ke Pede or Agre Ka Petha.

But having crossed the Yamuna Bridge, what I usually saw lined up in summers in the sleepy town of Kairana were hundreds of vending stalls—mobile and static. They were all selling nicely cut and washed “Laila ki ungliyan aur Majnu ki pasliyan!”— which were nothing but Kakri or cucumber. Salted masala added taste to the cool and refreshing product on sale, besides the Laila-Majnu sobriquets.

In Shamli, they had watermelons cut into appropriate and attractive sizes, with that blood-red foamy pulp. And you had no choice but to order a big plate full beyond the brim.

I equally relished the sight of easy-going Mullas donning skull-caps eating watermelons while sitting on Yamuna Bridge sideberms, breaking the big ball into two halves and partaking of the sweet, pithy, viscous stuff, with beards dipping in the green bowl. Compared to this, I pity the white woman, who ate the watermelon with fork in a South England county, when I saw her treating herself with a not-so-ripe pinkish likeness of pulp.

In Punjab-Haryana too we witness such sights and summer months have Pudina-pani sellers. They hang green pudina leaves around a huge pitcher. Then they also put a lemon-rosary around the pitcher, for enhanced effect. Lo and behold! The elixir sells like it should!

The most awaited vendor some years ago used to be the Malai-Baraf-wala who had a pitcher of icecream, wrapped in a woollen muffler. He carried a small scale with him and enough hard but green leaves of probably Dhaak trees, on which he served his product. People invariably had a sample of this malai-baraf on the back of their palm.

Once while returning from Hyderabad, our train passed through Gujarat and Rajasthan, and the cut-tomatoes straight from the dried-up seasonal streams, sprinkled with water and served in huge plates had their own unique and organic taste.

Besides, nariyal pani, thandaee made of crushed almonds and black pepper in sweetened milk, lassi; chuskee (ice-crush candy with attractive colours of viscous sweet liquid appropriately sprinkled all over), kanji-pani, aam-panna, gond-kateera and falooda; Bhyu-Patra juice also added up to the summers’ menu card. In summers, Indians just love products having ‘thandee-taseer’—cool characteristic (apologies for bad translation).

No, I am not forgetting something special which not only acts as nourishment to the taste buds but also as laxative to constipated mortals. I cannot think of an Indian summer when I was not loyal to the king of fruits — mango.

Gate Crash at Royal Wedding

A gatecrasher's manual: Rajbir Deswal :
Not so long ago, there was a practice among boys living in a hostel to have a tie that would be exclusively worn to get entry into a wedding in the vicinity (remember 3 Idiots?). The hosts would usually be confused, regarding the gatecrashers to be legitimate guests; the gatecrashers, meanwhile, would have enough of the sumptuous spread to sustain themselves till the next wedding.
Well, here is another opportunity. Royalty no less than the Queen of England is out, inviting guests to attend the wedding of her grandson Prince William. If you don't get the invite, then try these tips.
Dress up like the mascot Maharaja of Air India, with a turban of red and blue stripes. Red and white looks more American. Also maintain that seemingly welcoming but submissive style, after the fashion of Indian kings of the British era.
Look down (looking straight in the eyes is taken as audacious) while walking into the pearly gates of the Celebrations Gardens. They will let you in without questioning and frisking for being one of the old true blues.
If you are a sports lover, carry a polo stick in your left hand. While kissing the hand of the royal receiver, keep the left leg bent near the knee, like one to be knighted. Also don a golf cap or a felt hat to be doffed and to go behind it, lest you are recognised. They will welcome you thinking you were their chum, who learnt all gentlemanly-sportsmanship from them only and none else.
If this doesn't work, adopt the guise of a snake-charmer but take care not to swagger like the Scottish Pipers, for the royals don't like them. The English are well aware of the Biblical snake-in-thegrass, and before a wedding, they would surely like to catch it while you are playing the been. With such services rendered, they might let you in, after consulting the royal priest from Canterbury.
There are some `don'ts' to be followed as well. Don't try being near the wedding site without a shirt, for they will invariably take you to be a wandering vagrant or even a `naked fakir'. A cigarette on your lips might remind them of Lady Mountbatten's `lighting up' at the hands of Nehru and given their recent aversion to smoking, they might not let you in.They are British, please.
For more such tips, you may consult the ones who have been staying in that country without valid visas. But no matter what you do, do not end up looking like a visa seeker.

When no eve-teaser anymore calls them "item"!

Midlife crisis

The Great Depression of 40s

By Rupa Gulab.

Penguin Books.

Pages 214. Rs 250.

Reviewed by Rajbir Deswal

TETHERED to tattered poles, they are like sagged wires sans current and enough flow. It is essentially an all-women world of fiction, factually fructifying from their menopausal stage, in the middle-aged weaker sex. Rupa Gulab weaves her female protagonists’ ageing dilemma, in many an intense situation, when they have to sort it out themselves, keeping their "men" away and effaced, but they are definitely there! Mantra and Anjali are sisters-in-law. Both are on the wrong side of 40. Mantra is issueless by choice and in agreement with her husband Vir, while Anjali’s good hubby Karan can’t make her ex-boyfriend Shiv wipe off her mind, even after giving her a son who is now graduating in a college. Anjali’s son Rohan stumbles on her hidden agenda and leaves her a woman more sinned against than sinning, for she had been "though-seriously-but-only" indulging and contemplating manifestations of her fantasies for Shiv. On discovering his Mom’s secret love for her ex, Rohan blurts, "Go to that b****** — my father’s too good for you!" Then, there is the wannabe starlet Samira who is tolerating being bashed up by her mate, but still staying-put with him to settle scores only after making it one day to Page 3. And the spinster maid Reshma, gaily slips into the adulterous arms of the chauffeur, and is ready to end her life out of frustration. "Hey, take a sabbatical at the very least, dammit! You’re forty-three, you prefer yolks to whites, you smoke, you give veggies a wide berth, osteoporosis and quite possibly a hip bone replacement are on their way, and you may never find out what it feels like to be truly free. Go on tell him to go fly a kite!" Unable to digest the home truth or bullshit from Partho, her boss, Mantra calls it quits to tread a path that has the next milestone as her nemesis — The Great Depression of the 40s. This leads Mantra to indulging in self-pity; nearly half her life being over, with no sustaining achievement, the career not exciting her anymore, a cholesterol-corporate-afflicted husband becoming nonchalant and the libido bidding her goodbye, and above all, with nothing to look forward to except wrinkles, scraggy chicken-neck and lousy eyesight, among other horrible things. She then decides to have a baby, but things keep on going awry and awful. Anjali, on the other hand, dwindles in a kind of "to be or not to be" and is taken over by passion for her ex, harps on divorcing good and benign Karan. She seeks a new young look with waxing and workouts to fish out pampering from the "once-upon-a-time-junkie" Shiv. Have a look at her’s and other women’s trauma when they’re dressing to impress (and in Anjali’s case — Shiv): "She had changed six outfits, agitatedly discarding each on different grounds: too casual, too wannabe hip, too unflattering to the hips, too over-the-top for the occasion, neck too high to be sexy, neck sluttishly low." Gulab’s novel focuses on the lifestyle of the very high elitist’s strata who may not be as rich but who harp on enough that is pseudo-modern. And, here is the casualty of morals that goes up for a toss: curt, business-like, self-seeking disposition and a punishingly tight schedule to survive in a corporate world of the socialites, in the common denominator of "depression". Rupa couldn’t have been more charitable, realistic and candid to women in describing how age catches up with their "depression of 40s" when no eve-teaser anymore calls them "item!". And when it’s "A for Alzheimer’s, S for scurvy, H for herpes`85!" The drudgery of the corporate scenario of upstaging, maneuvering, one-upmanship, cut-throat competition, which is the hallmark, has its toll taken even on the interpersonal relations of its operatives. When at a party, Vir’s boss calls Mantra as Mamta, obviously not correctly remembering her name, Vir asks her to keep mum and not to correct the boss for it might look rude. And, thereafter, all around address Mantra with her newly corporate-baptised calling. There is enough that exposes the inner lining of business suits. Gulab has enough to give to the foodies, Bacchus lovers, Western music fads, Hollywood celebrity fans, and much more that the contemporary generation of young readers would want to lap up. She has a unique lucid and clear style which is amazingly simple, even in depiction of the very complex and intense aspects of modern life that may warrant expression through the so-called modern lingo, for the idiom that is in vogue and is best understood these days is transnational. Societal concerns also find voice in the novel and Gen X’s perceived as unwanted and undesirable orgies are depicted with ease and acumen of a master raconteur.