Paint is Still Lilac

This chick-lit heroine is not just about Manolos; she shops for modern art

This chick-lit heroine is not just about Manolos; she shops for modern art
South Bombay is a different country,they do things differently there. Its more expensive than most places in the world. Its school admissions are booked when babies are in utero. Its roadside hawkers can tell you which IPOs to watch out for. And,as its Wikipedia entry purrs,power supply is available round the clock. Behind its façade of Gothic buildings and crumbling masonry,South Bombay works.

Yet there is another aspect of South Bombay an aspect that doesnt work and indeed has never had to work for a day in its life. This is the club of ladies who lunch,who rattle their jewellery,and whose idea of a preschoolers birthday party is to put a circus tent inside the ballroom of a five-star hotel.

This side of South Bombay is mostly about air-kissing and shopping. This being so,the preeminent genre of South Bombay is surely chick-lit,because chick-lit is also mostly about air-kissing and shopping. Not that one has anything against shopping,especially if it is for Manolos and Balenciagas,with a way to pay for them. Newly arrived expatriate Taras priorities are clear: find a good school for Rohan; find an apartment with a seaview; find a mini-battalion of maids to run the house. After which she can begin shopping in earnest.

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In this case,she begins shopping for contemporary Indian art. Amrita Chowdhurys debut novel Faking It is chick-lit with a difference instead of a struggling,underpaid,overworked young woman whining about her job,her sex life or lack of it,here is an articulate,privileged yummy mummy. What lifts this newest offering above the rest if only by a couple of millimetres is the rush of resentment that surges through the first few pages. For,Tara is a successful career woman who discovers,one morning,that she has to pack her bags,her child and her identity in order to accompany her husband halfway across the world. The husband gets to follow his dream,and the wife gets to follow the husband. Its a familiar trajectory,but one that hasnt often been seen within the lilac covers of this sub-genre. As Tara recognises,this is the Asian woman thing,i.e. chucking up your own life to follow your spouse dutifully around the world. This,among other things,is part of her fascination with Amrita Sher-Gil. Bet she would never have changed her life around for anyone, Tara tells herself about the legendary painter.

Despite her conflict,Tara soon settles into her life of privilege. Chick-lit reconciles the contradictions of such a life mainly by shutting them out. The early part of the novel has the occasional vignette of South Bombays everyday ironies,such as the occasional starved baby being passed around among equally starved women in search of pity-money but the moment Tara enters through the smart wood-and-glass door of the restaurant,she forgets the outside world in the relief of being able to order a proper latte.

The married,mother-of-one heroine expends her rage in ripping up an old building in Colaba,setting up a gallery,and buying art. Not very intelligently,she manages to buy a fake Amrita Sher-Gil and then manages to do some sleuthing in the midst of her hectic social life. The rest is predictable,but Tara is often observant and quick with words. Like South Bombay,the novel works.