You know, when after prolonged gorging on balushahi, khubani ka meetha, kalakand, gulab jamun, malapua, you turn to a plain Cornetto ice cream? You bite into it and it turns out to be anything but plain: the buttery-smooth ice cream blends with the crunchy waffle it is wrapped in and the nuts sprinkled on top are a feast.
That`s how it felt when I put my regular reading aside and picked up Anuja Chauhan`s latest book. The House That BJ Built is another cracker of a book, with all the regular AC requisites like dishy-as-hell heroes, wacky-as-hell heroines, eccentric family members, along with some new ones like ‘Cavilli’ gowns, Vicky`s Secret, living girlfriends (live-in, of course), girls with boobage, men of a certain age wearing Being Hanuman tees, and to top it, an `aur jee` song. Try repeating those two words on a loop and you`ll get it.
This is the sequel to Chauhan`s last book Those Pricey Thakur Girls, and almost all the usual suspects are back. They are not really People Like Us, given that the family is looking to sell some prime property in Lutyen`s Delhi for ` 200 crore but for all that, the quirks cross economic frontiers and appeal to well, people like us. If the heroine, Bonu Singh, is a bomb of another kind, if the hero Samar is not the sexiest in Chauhan`s line-up so far, if some of the loose ends are tied up far too neatly, the language, the happenings, the crises that keep erupting all keep the reader well engaged. The author`s keen eye for the foibles of men and women, families and friends, is as entertaining as it is perceptive. This is domestic discord, some character traits as well as characters are less than endearing, but all of it is given the light-as-air soufflé treatment that has now become Chauhan`s trademark.
Romcom? Hell, yeah. Chick-lit? The very best. Oh, and loads of fun, too.
Sheila Kumar is the author of Kith and Kin (Rupa Publications). She has had her short fiction published in as many as10 anthologies. After a long stint with The Times of India, Sheila now writes for a slew of publications on anything and everything that interests her.