So, we kinda knew this was going to happen, right? Chetan Bhagat was going to botch feminism worse than Lisa Haydon, or Kangana Ranaut, or Alia Bhattin his latest novel. What else did we expect from someone who gets waxed to understand the real pain women go through in life? But I have a problem. I like to have an informed opinion on things everyone's talking about. It's why I watch Game of Thrones, and it's exactly why I pre-ordered Bhagat's One Indian Girl, a book that he said was about feminism in modern India.
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It's important to note that I do think what Bhagat has managed to do with his writing career is impressive. I don't agree with the perception that he's not literary enough. Everyone I meet, even people who never want to read a book, have read one of Bhagat's. I've read every single one of his fiction works (I think). I liked Five Point Someone, One Night @ the Call Centre was hilarious in parts, I thought The 3 Mistakes of My Life was boring, I can't think of 2 States, the book, without thinking about 2 States, the movie. I do not remember anything about Revolution 2020, and I thought Half Girlfriend was terrible. So, while I didn't expect to fall in love with One Indian Girl, I hadn't already dismissed it. In retrospect, maybe I should have. But, as a feminist, I wanted to see how Bhagat understood feminism.
Turns out, not very well. The story is about Radhika Mehta, an extremely successful investment banker, who's come to Goa from London to get married to someone her parents found through a matrimonial website. She tells you right at the beginning that she's unlikable because she's rich, opinionated, and not a virgin. Then, through various flashbacks, Radhika tells you about her life from Delhi to New York to Hong Kong to London, including her relationships with men in those cities. When, a week before her wedding, her past comes knocking on her door, she needs to decide if she can be the good Indian girl everyone wants her to be and just get married to this dude she barely knows.
To his credit, Bhagat gets several things right, including Indian parents' bizarre fixation with getting their daughters married, their complete disregard for her accomplishments, and the glaring differences between how the groom's and the bride's families behave at a wedding.
The social commentary, primarily through Radhika's point of view, is spot on and infuriating because it's true. He, or Radhika, asks several important questions: why can't a woman earn more than her husband? What is so wrong with being 26 and unmarried? Why is the 'wheatish' daughter less marriageable than the fair one? It's commendable that Bhagat wants his vast readership to think about these things.
But, on the whole, Bhagat, and Radhika, understand feminism on a very superficial level.
Here are some of the instances where Radhika judged the hell out of other female characters in the book, the very antithesis of feminism, which expects you to stand up for all women (and other genders).
- When the groom and his friends crash Radhika's bachelorette, she says, "Even though the girls protested at the boys coming here, they secretly liked it. This is how we girls are. At times we want to be wanted, even when we deny it." (WE DON'T. NO MEANS NO.)
- This sentence: "The way Indian girls transform themselves from party chicks in short dresses to fully clad, chaste, virginal bhajan attendees is almost a visual effects' miracle."
- When someone asks Radhika out on a date, she wonders, "Will it look too cheap and desperate if I say yes? Will he think I'm a s**t?" (WHAT! NO. ISN'T HE ASKING YOU?)
- When she finds herself flirting with this guy on the date, she wants to change the topic because "You don't want to be judged as a s**t on the first date."
- On another date: "How can a girl admit she's thinking about kissing? Isn't that what super s**ts do?" (WHAT IS A SUPER s**t?)
- When she's on a two-wheeler with her would-be husband, she doesn't put her arms around him because she didn't want him to think she was "too easy."
- She fat-shamed the aunts who were rehearsing to dance at her sangeet.
That's not all. But you get the drift, right? Radhika called herself a feminist 50 times in the book, and while she did go from being under-confident to assertive by the end of the book, her problematic views about feminism did not change.
What this means is that Bhagat obviously didn't do his research, because it doesn't look like he's heard of intersectionality. His feminist, essentially Radhika, is an educated, urban, independent, working woman who looks down upon anyone who hasn't made the same choices as her. Radhika constantly disparages her older sister, who wasn't academically-inclined and got married when she was 22 out of choice.
No one's a perfect feminist, but we're all trying to learn as much as we can about the movement. Radhika, on the other hand, has learnt the dictionary definition of the term by heart, but when her to-be husband suggests that the movement should really be called humanist, not feminist, she just agrees with him. Not because she doesn't want to argue with him, but because she buys into his logic.
There are other annoying things about the book, including Radhika's inner voice or alter ego or something, whom she called Mini-Me.
Mini-me's irritating presence in the book can only be rivalled by Anastasia'sInner Goddess from the 50 Shades trilogy. Bhagat's writing is colloquial but lazy, and parts of the book are extremely boring. Everyone knows Bhagat used to be an investment banker, but if you had any doubts, the great detail in which he writes about Radhika's work will convince you and put you to sleep simultaneously.
Oh, and I don't care how much research he did before writing this book from a girl's perspective, anyone who thinks that the boyfriend putting his head on the girlfriend's HAIR, not her arm or whatever, is an actual sleeping position, has just failed.
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