Anjali Bose, 19, lives with her
parents in Gauripur, a rural hinterland. She is under the strict rule of Indian
tradition, with a father eager to marry her off to the best suitor. Her older
sister, whose groom was chosen by her father, is now the divorced mother of a
four-year-old, and takes whatever work
she can get, however dangerous or unsavory--so Anjali's father feels even more
pressure to choose wisely for her.
Anjali alternately chafes under this arranged marriage groom-quest and looks with interest on prospective suitors. She finally agrees to see one of the men. He arrives, all spit and polish, polite and obsequious to her parents and driving a very nice car. Anjali agrees to go for a drive with him, but he forces himself on her, and suddenly she switches from submissive daughter to girl on the run. She waits until the household is asleep, packs a suitcase and decamps.
Anjali has studied English in Guaripur with an American teacher, Peter Champion, and it is to his home she goes. This begins Anjali's education as to the ways of the world. Peter has a male lover, much to Anjali's surprise. Peter gives her money, tells her where to find lodging and to whom she can go for a job in a call center. The destination is never in question: Bangalore! Peter tells her that Bangalore is on fire, it's where the money is, where she should go to seek her fortune and reinvent herself.
Anjali--now Angie--soon learns about the difficulties of leaving the comfort and predictability of home for parts unknown. Much has been written about blending into a new culture, usually involving leaving one's country for another. Angie's shock in another part of her own country is just as great: the many dialects of Bangalore might as well be foreign languages; the young women she meets are free in every sense of the word; the house she moves into is a crumbling ruin that was once a gathering place for members of The Raj, with the owner still trailing tattered clouds of glory.
Mukherjee goes Bollywood after Angie arrives in Bangalore: a series of wildly improbable events catapults the country girl from a new lover's arms to prison to the opulent home of the woman who had decided not to employ her in the call center, off on a canoe trip with a photographer and his friend and, finally, back to visit her old school in Gauripur--where she's hailed as the conquering heroine--all in a period of eight months. Mukherjee leaves quite a few loose ends (plot lines that just peter out) but she has captured the tension between old and new, traditional and postmodern, obligation to family and to self--all that is India today, and the pace at which it is happening. Two of the book's mantras are: "Nothing in the world is as it seems--it's all light and angles" and "We're all Photoshopped." Believe it, as you sign on for the ride.--Valerie Ryan
Shelf Talker: A traditional Indian girl leaves her backwater village for the bright lights of big-city Bangalore.