This is the actual story int he book Custody - on which this YHM is based. They have even stuck to the names, but the story is being modified in the serial
Failed marriages and their consequences are the theme of Manju Kapur's latest book. As the title, "Custody", suggests the story is about the bitter battle between divorced parents for the custody of their two children. It is another absorbing story in Kapur's series of popular novels on modern urban Indian middle class life and its travails.
The book relates the story of the breakup of two marriages, second marriages and the willingness of adults to manipulate and use their children's emotions to obtain custody. It shows the slow, tortuous progress of custody cases in Indian courts and the misery of parents. It reveals the ugliness that surrounds the battle over kids - the exaggerations, the lies and distortions that are involved in Indian court cases.
Emerald-eyed Shagun has an affair with her husband Raman's boss, high-flying executive Ashok Khanna, and wants a divorce. Dull, plodding Raman refuses and the two children, Arjun and Roohi, deeply loved by both parents, become the pawns in their battle. Eventually Shagun gives up custody of the children to obtain a divorce and is allowed access to the children by the court.
The second failed marriage is of Ishita and Suryakant, scion of a traditional merchant family; Ishita is divorced when the family discovers that she is infertile. Ishita returns home to her parents in Swarg Niwas, the apartment block where Raman's parents also live.
Shagun moves into a new life in America and the children shuttle between the two parents. Both parents remarry, Shagun marries Ashok while Raman and Ishita's parents arrange for them to meet and eventually get married.
It is the children who show the effects of the failed marriage. Arjun does poorly in his studies and stops going to school. Roohi shows the classic signs of insecurity like thumbsucking, bedwetting and clings to her stepmother, Ishita.
Ashok Khanna uses his old school network to get Arjun admitted into an elite boarding school. Arjun learns to move with confidence between this boarding school and the charms of New York, leaving behind the mundane existence of his father's house. He turns against his father and tries to influence his little sister along the lines his mother has taught him.
Afraid to lose Roohi if she visits her mother, Ishita conjures up medical reasons to prevent Roohi from travelling to New York. Shagun retaliates by ensuring that Raman rarely gets to see his son.
Manju Kapur's forte is the authenticity of her setting and the way she captures characters, as also the small details and affectations of upper middle class life in south and east Delhi. The story is located during the late 1990s, when the economy is opening up and foreign goods are entering local shops.
The story is related with irony and a bit of satire; there are scenes of high corporate life, snapshots of the high life in America and of the retired parents living in east Delhi's apartment blocks. Kapur has vividly brought to life another aspect of modern urban life.
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