One Indian Girl is a novel by the Indian writer Chetan Bhagat published in 2016. This 272 paged book is classified under Young Adult Fiction and Romance Fiction. This book is Chetan’s 9th book and 7th novel. The story, as the title implies, is about an Indian girl, Radhika Mehta, an investment banker who works at Goldman Sachs. A nerd who makes a lot of money eventually made a couple of boyfriends whom she ditched later or got ditched. Lastly, She decides to go for an arranged marriage. During the events of her wedding, her ex-boyfriends come back to her and she struggles to make a decision to choose a perfect life partner.
The author wrote this book to show the concept of women empowerment and feminism. Was he able to do that successfully or this book just a story of pseudo-feminism revolving around the scenes of women trashing men? Let’s see
Check out my blogs on How I rate a book to see my book rating system and How to write a book review – A step by step guide to see how I review the books.
What made me pick “One Indian Girl” By Chetan Bhagat
I was traveling in December last year and about to complete my 2018 yearly reading challenge on Goodreads. Looking for something quick and light to read for my journey, I found One Indian Girl available as the part of Amazon Prime reading. So I borrowed it on my kindle and started reading it. The book wasn’t even in my to-read list. I didn’t set any expectations from the book. Just started it for the sake of quick entertainment and wasn’t expecting any lessons from it. One additional point for choosing One Indian Girl was, I was already familiar with the writing style of Chetan Bhagat as I’ve read some of his earlier works. That doesn’t mean I have rated the previous works to 5 stars. But a familiar writing style can help you get into the book in no time.
How did I find the book – My Experience
It was an easy read because of simple and plain writing style. Someone without a broad vocabulary can read this book without even touching the dictionary. As I expected, the book was a quick and easy read. But the book disappointed me by its story. In fact, there wasn’t even much story.
My main reason for disappointment was “too much drama” without a strong base. It appeared like I was reading another Bollywood masala story which is more irritating than entertainment. The book is nowhere near to realism. If I’d want a Bollywood story, I’d go watch a movie instead of reading its book. Personally, I read books to find out something more meaningful than videos and movies. The book is filled with cliche dramatic scenes. Think about a scene where there is a wedding going on and someone comes to ruin it. Now imagine such a thing happening repeatedly. See what I mean?
Critical Comments
Some previous books of the author were adapted into movies soon after they were published. One of them(if not all) was a blockbuster in 2009. Now it looks like Chetan tweaks its books with extra drama to make them appropriate for movie adaptations. The story is full of drama and even after this, it wasn’t a strong & meaningful story. That eventually made it into a nonsense drama. The story was too predictable, so you’ll know what is coming in the next pages. In some places, you find some twists but they are pretty ridiculous.
The story is nowhere relatable to real life. The author presented a Punjabi family mixed with conservative and progressive ideas. A confused family who educate her daughter for higher studies, send her to London and Hongkong for work and then they say “We are not proud of you because you earn so much, and because of that, nobody would like to marry you?” Does that even make sense? At least I didn’t see something even near to it. He tried to show a girl who is independent and making her own decisions but ended up in showing a confused character jumping back and forth in different relationships and trashing men and even her own parents.
Final notes and Recommendations
I won’t recommend this book. I won’t say this was a total waste of time for me. I give it 2 stars just because of the laughter it gave me because of its ridiculousness. That kept me going to finish this book and I didn’t have a hard time to finish it. Usually, I give 1 star to those which I just want to leave in the middle and don’t want even to finish. This book is good for someone who is not into reading much or have a tough time to finish a book or someone who is trying to build a reading habit. But again, there are other books better fit for that purpose.
My Rating on “One Indian Girl”: 2/5 Stars
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