Twenty and the City

Despite sticking to every conceivable stereotype and detailing every set piece that there is in chick lit, Almost Single manages to be original. It is written with disarming honesty with occasional glimpses of staggering wisdom. Like the description of Aisha’s friend who quietly accepts her own desperate need to be married and succumbs to registering on a matrimonial website.

Kala also makes some fairly astute observations of urban companionship in general, where according to her, “the perfect picture also has lots of blots and splotches”. She takes several digs at the Indian dependence on astrologers when it comes to choosing your soulmate, and candidly acknowledges that the spiraling divorce rates in Indian cities are something of a “boon” for single women like herself.

Undoubtedly, some of the situations in Kala’s book are straight from her experiences as a hotelier; all those secret afternoon rendezvous in the hotel and the perils of being the mistress, and not the spouse. All very authentic but not terribly entertaining.

The love interest, Karan Verma, is, of course, the perfect catch, an NRI investment banker setting up base in Delhi. However, his nonchalance is inconsistently done and he comes across as an insipid Darcy. The mother makes annoyingly recurring appearances, and somehow, considering the bold and feisty Aisha, just doesn’t ring true.

However, what makes Almost Single appear incomplete is that there is very little allusion to the sexual freedom that comes with being single in the city and having the assurance of a fat paycheck at the end of the month. Unlike her western counterparts in chick lit where steamy details are dutifully recorded, Kala stops short of going the whole hog. There are a few, halting acknowledgements to Aisha’s own sex life but don’t expect anything as disarming as Fielding’s passages here.

Almost Single is emblematic of a demographic change in India, overlaid with cultural changes as well as gains towards gender equality in the workplace. But India still doesn’t have a voice that’s frank, hip and realistic in its treatment of sex and social bonds, like twentysomething Wei Hui’s in China, whose risque book Shanghai Baby gave readers fascinating insights into the single lives of urban Chinese women.