Book Review: Those Pricey Thakur Girls

Alright, let’s not kid ourselves. Dylan Singh Shekhawat isn’t rooted in realism. He is “tall and sinewy and muscular”, has “lean dimples”, unruly hair and a torso made up of “muscular toffee-brown bits”. He’s also smart, a journalist and an unrepentant flirt. In short, he’s like no Indian man you know, but who cares? Rhonda Byrne said in The Secret that if you visualise what you want, chances are the universe will manifest your desires. Fortunately for us, Anuja Chauhan has done the visualising. Ours is just to read, and dream on.

As aficionados of chick lit will know, high quality fluffy romantic comedy is very hard to write. The story must follow predictable patterns and yet hold a reader’s attention. The storytelling should be light-hearted but intelligent. The characters must be lovable, divorced from reality and yet credible. Most Indian attempts at chick lit have displayed about as much fluffiness as a tetrapod does, which is why Chauhan deserves three cheers. For the third time in a row, she’s cracked the rom-com code and given readers a story that’s as cuckoo as it is cute.

Set in pre-liberalisation New Delhi, Those Pricey Thakur Girls is a simple love story with some complications and many eccentric characters. Justice Thakur (retd) and his wife live in a bungalow in Hailey Road, New Delhi, with Debjani and Eshwari, two of their five daughters. When we meet Debjani, or Dabbu, she’s on the threshold of fame because she’s been selected as a newsreader on the state television channel. Her prince charming is Dylan Singh Shekhawat, the son of Justice Thakur’s friend, Saahas. Despite his commitment to being Casanova, Dylan falls hook line and sinker for Dabbu and Dabbu’s pulse pitter-patters simply at the thought of Dylan. But of course, before happily ever-after, there must be complications. So Chauhan throws in some sly villains, a touch of politics, one lunatic aunt, a sturdy shamiana and other whoops and whirls into Dabbu and Dylan’s story.

There’s more than a hint of Pride And Prejudice in Those Pricey Thakur Girls, but Chauhan isn’t a lazy storyteller. To Austen’s classic elements Chauhan adds some solid Delhi masala, including references to the Sikh riots, the snobbery of St Stephen’s alumni, a stolen kiss on a stairway and an obsession with body building. Those Pricey Thakur Girls bubbles with delightful mirth and Chauhan has the rare talent of being able to endow every character with a distinctive voice. Here’s the best part: this isn’t the last we’re seeing of the Thakurs. Chauhan’s next book, The House That BJ Built, will take us back to the Thakurs’ Hailey Road bungalow. Until then, we’ll settle for visualising that delicious Christian Rajput, Dylan Singh Shekhawat.      

@dpanjana