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Book title: Those Pricey Thakur Girls

Author: Anuja Chauhan

Publisher: Harper Collins India

Pages: 390

Humour is a tricky art and most people fail to employ it intelligently in their works, be it cinema, sitcoms, musical lyrics or illustrations. The art of writing is no different and here too, humour seems to revolve around the farcical, with borrowed references from the commonest elements available such as gender inequalities, insecure politicos, or simply the society we inhabit. So when you chance upon a book that stirs up genuine chuckles and at times, uninhibited laughter without the slightest trace of contempt, you welcome it with arms wide open. Anuja Chauhan's latest, 'Those Pricey Thakur Girls' is one such book on the stands that promises an entertaining read to those who don't fancy brainy literature.

About the book: (Retd) Justice Laxmi Narayan Thakur is possessive about only three things in life. One is the manicured garden of his sprawling Hailey road bungalow, two, his evening game of kot-piece with friends, and three, his five delicious daughters who he named in perfect alphabetical order, much to their dislike. A for Anjini, B for Binodini and C for Chandralekha are already married and hence, the focus is now on D for Debjani aka Dabbu, the pretty protagonist who, at the very outset of the novel, bags the job of a news anchor in the country's very own national news broadcaster, DeshDarpan. E for Eshwari is the youngest and still in school but knows the boys and their tactics better than her older siblings. She is determined to make Debjani fall for a guy or at the very least, consider someone drool worthy. But Debjani, whose share of love and kisses are reserved only for the street mongrels, is not easy to impress. Enter Dylan Singh Shekhawat, the irresistible christian-rajput with intriguing, dark eyes and a sincerely "well-placed butt" who manages to catch the coy attention of Debjani. An investigative journalist with "India Post" and the son of Justice Thakur's good friend, Sahaas, D for Dylan turns out to be everything that Debjani would ever want - teasing, trusting, at times annoying but unquestionably promising. He even goes to jail swearing by his company's beliefs: Truth. Balance. Courage, such sincere are his journalistic ethics.

One thing that keeps you guessing till the very end is the picture of a cat on the cover of the book. It's only when you reach the penultimate chapter that the furry feline makes a second guest appearance and clears the air.

About the author, her inspiration and more: Anuja has always been inspired by what goes on around her and both her previously written books ('The Zoya Factor' and 'Battle for Bittora') have autobiographical elements aplenty. 'Those Pricey Thakur Girls' too is based on Anuja's relationship with her elder sisters. "Just like the girls in the book, I too grew up in the 1980s and I was the youngest of a set of four sisters. My elder sisters were eleven, ten and three years older to me - very pretty, extremely talented, and they always had lots of admirers hanging about, who were always really, really nice to me, in the hope that I would put in a good word for them," she shares.

The times are such that more and more books are being adapted into films - Chetan Bhagat's 'Three Mistakes of my Life' recently enthralled the audience with 'Kai Po Che' (and before that 'Five Point Someone' won several accolades with '3 Idiots'), and Amish Tripathi's 'The Immortals of Meluha' is brewing under Karan Johar's directorial guidance. Both of Anuja's previous books too ('The Zoya Factor' and 'Battle for Bittora') will also hit the audio-visual medium of entertainment very soon. It seems a film adapted from a book that puts a face to the characters, is accepted better than the medium of reading in a country like India. Anuja agrees, "A film is always more widely released and so, a lot more people are exposed to it. Unfortunately, books in India have a very small audience. In fact, the most widely exposed medium is actually television. Even an averagely rating soap on Star Plus or Colors has a wider viewership than the biggest blockbuster movie. But I think each medium has its own strengths and weaknesses. Movies have less subplots and layering than books and are therefore simpler and by the same token they can also end up being stronger."

'Those Pricey Thakur Girls' is a warm potpourri of hilarious overtones - Debjani's beauty spot, an unwavering mole on her chin that she fears will grow hair one day; Dev Pawar, who gloats about being a bit too eligible a bachelor for her "by god's grace"; Purshottam Ohri, the "Fat Old Man of Indian Publishing" and Dylan's boss whose watermelon-eating-and-spitting-seeds habit will crack you up, along with several other amusing references.