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Three Sisters from Calcutta #3
Miss New India
"Enchanting! Mukherjee's pitch-perfect ear for character and mood and her storytelling gifts capture the exhilarating restlessness of a young Indian woman's pursuit of happiness. Miss New India illuminates as brilliantly as it entertains." —Amy Tan
Anjali Bose’s prospects don’t look great. Born into a traditional lower-middle‑class family, she lives in a backwater town with only an arranged marriage on the horizon. But her ambition, charm, and fluency in language do not go unnoticed by her charismatic and influential expat teacher, Peter Champion. And champion her he does, both to powerful people who can help her along the way and to Anjali herself, stirring in her a desire to take charge of her own destiny. So she sets off to Bangalore, India’s fastest‑growing metropolis, and soon falls in with an audacious and ambitious crowd of young people, who have learned how to sound American by watching shows like Seinfeld in order to get jobs in call centers, where they quickly out‑earn their parents. And it is in this high‑tech city where Anjali — suddenly free of the confines of class, caste, and gender — is able to confront her past and reinvent herself. Of course, the seductive pull of life in the New India does not come without a dark side . . . "Each character fascinates, and every detail glints with irony and intent, as Mukherjee brilliantly choreographs her compelling protagonist’s struggles against betrayal, violence, and corruption in a dazzling plot." — Booklist , starred
Anjali Bose’s prospects don’t look great. Born into a traditional lower-middle‑class family, she lives in a backwater town with only an arranged marriage on the horizon. But her ambition, charm, and fluency in language do not go unnoticed by her charismatic and influential expat teacher, Peter Champion. And champion her he does, both to powerful people who can help her along the way and to Anjali herself, stirring in her a desire to take charge of her own destiny. So she sets off to Bangalore, India’s fastest‑growing metropolis, and soon falls in with an audacious and ambitious crowd of young people, who have learned how to sound American by watching shows like Seinfeld in order to get jobs in call centers, where they quickly out‑earn their parents. And it is in this high‑tech city where Anjali — suddenly free of the confines of class, caste, and gender — is able to confront her past and reinvent herself. Of course, the seductive pull of life in the New India does not come without a dark side . . . "Each character fascinates, and every detail glints with irony and intent, as Mukherjee brilliantly choreographs her compelling protagonist’s struggles against betrayal, violence, and corruption in a dazzling plot." — Booklist , starred
336 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
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970 people want to read
About the author
Bharati Mukherjee
47 books228 followersBharati Mukherjee was an Indian-born award winning American writer who explored the internal culture clashes of her immigrant characters in the award-winning collection The Middleman and Other Stories and in novels like Jasmine and Desirable Daughters.
Ms. Mukherjee, a native of Calcutta, attended schools in England, Switzerland and India, earned advanced degrees in creative writing in the United States and lived for more than a decade in Canada, affording her a wealth of experience in the modern realities of multiculturalism.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Calcutta in 1959 and a master’s degree from the University of Baroda, in Gujarat, in 1961. After sending six handwritten stories to the University of Iowa, she was accepted into the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she studied with Philip Roth and Vance Bourjaily in her first year. She earned an M.F.A. in 1963 and a doctorate in comparative literature in 1969 at Iowa.
After years of short-term academic appointments, Ms. Mukherjee was hired in 1989 to teach postcolonial and world literature at the University of California, Berkeley.
Bharati Mukherjee died on Saturday, January 28, 2017 in Manhattan. She was 76.
Ms. Mukherjee, a native of Calcutta, attended schools in England, Switzerland and India, earned advanced degrees in creative writing in the United States and lived for more than a decade in Canada, affording her a wealth of experience in the modern realities of multiculturalism.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Calcutta in 1959 and a master’s degree from the University of Baroda, in Gujarat, in 1961. After sending six handwritten stories to the University of Iowa, she was accepted into the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she studied with Philip Roth and Vance Bourjaily in her first year. She earned an M.F.A. in 1963 and a doctorate in comparative literature in 1969 at Iowa.
After years of short-term academic appointments, Ms. Mukherjee was hired in 1989 to teach postcolonial and world literature at the University of California, Berkeley.
Bharati Mukherjee died on Saturday, January 28, 2017 in Manhattan. She was 76.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 281 reviews
September 28, 2011
Random thoughts:
- It was kind of light, and easy to read, which I appreciated. The writer writes, for the most part, with an engaging touch. In a way, it's kind of a "pop" novel that deals with real, interesting themes.
- Conversely, though it deals with fairly serious, "large" themes (especially the tensions between old and new in a rapidly changing India), I'm not sure it qualifies as "great literature". In fact, it was the author's attempts at "great literature" that made it ultimately fall a bit flat for me. I thought the book was at its best when it was just kind of a fairly light-hearted take on a young girl's transition from small town to big city life in modern India. I felt like I got a good sense of the issues at hand. But mid-way through, I began to realize that the author had slightly "greater" ambitions. Basically, every character in the book, as well as every location, every scene, even every casual detail, "represents" something, or serves a largely symbolic/theoretical/one-dimensional role: there is a gay friend, an ex-patriot, an old colonialist lady, an entrepreneur, a traditional father, a colonial mansion, a call center, a terrorist, a nouveau riche benefactress, a free-thinking young man. Even the casual details (a look-alike roommate, a t-shirt, etc) come to serve a purpose. For me, it ended up reading like a "teen lit" book you might read in high school, where everything serves a purpose, and has an obvious meaning (or lesson) -- but nothing really is fleshed out or feels "real". I don't necessarily mean this as a criticism (I, for one, like teen lit, and think it serves a valid purpose). It's just that the book kind of bogs down, and rings a bit false, when the author tries to force her story (or story-telling) to be "great" and "profound". I feel like she was trying too hard (swinging for the fences), and that she didn't really succeed.
- Additionally (and related to the above), I never felt that I got a real handle on the main character. A small-town girl, she is supposed to have some obvious quality that endears her to an almost never-ending parade of super-interesting and influential people -- but it was never clear to me just what exactly was so special or endearing about her. Early on, we are told that she is not particularly attractive (except for her smile), but she somehow winds up as a cover girl, a style icon and artistic muse. We are also "told" that her high school teacher thinks she is unusually smart, but there was little in the actual description that made me feel she was all that smart (indeed, during a lot of the narrative she comes off as rather stupid, shallow and unlikable). I kept feeling that I was being "told" she was intelligent, sassy, and interesting, instead of actually experiencing it for myself. She was simultaneously supposed to represent a kind of universal "every girl", while being endlessly fascinating to everyone. Like the plot, I'm not sure that she successfully resolved herself between being a metaphor and a real character. The author just tried too hard to force the metaphors, force the symbolism, even force the plot, instead of letting the meanings (and story) just arise more naturally and lightly.
- Again, I'm not trying to bash the book. It's not "great", but there were things about it that I really liked, and I *really* appreciated the author taking on an interesting topic in a very, very easy-to-read and simple way. You could do a lot worse if you are looking for an easy way to get to know modern India.
(One last comment. In a way, the style of this book reminded me of Indian cooking. There is a touch of a lot of different flavors: melodrama, comedy, social commentary, farce, extreme seriousness, light-heartedness, mystery, etc.)
- It was kind of light, and easy to read, which I appreciated. The writer writes, for the most part, with an engaging touch. In a way, it's kind of a "pop" novel that deals with real, interesting themes.
- Conversely, though it deals with fairly serious, "large" themes (especially the tensions between old and new in a rapidly changing India), I'm not sure it qualifies as "great literature". In fact, it was the author's attempts at "great literature" that made it ultimately fall a bit flat for me. I thought the book was at its best when it was just kind of a fairly light-hearted take on a young girl's transition from small town to big city life in modern India. I felt like I got a good sense of the issues at hand. But mid-way through, I began to realize that the author had slightly "greater" ambitions. Basically, every character in the book, as well as every location, every scene, even every casual detail, "represents" something, or serves a largely symbolic/theoretical/one-dimensional role: there is a gay friend, an ex-patriot, an old colonialist lady, an entrepreneur, a traditional father, a colonial mansion, a call center, a terrorist, a nouveau riche benefactress, a free-thinking young man. Even the casual details (a look-alike roommate, a t-shirt, etc) come to serve a purpose. For me, it ended up reading like a "teen lit" book you might read in high school, where everything serves a purpose, and has an obvious meaning (or lesson) -- but nothing really is fleshed out or feels "real". I don't necessarily mean this as a criticism (I, for one, like teen lit, and think it serves a valid purpose). It's just that the book kind of bogs down, and rings a bit false, when the author tries to force her story (or story-telling) to be "great" and "profound". I feel like she was trying too hard (swinging for the fences), and that she didn't really succeed.
- Additionally (and related to the above), I never felt that I got a real handle on the main character. A small-town girl, she is supposed to have some obvious quality that endears her to an almost never-ending parade of super-interesting and influential people -- but it was never clear to me just what exactly was so special or endearing about her. Early on, we are told that she is not particularly attractive (except for her smile), but she somehow winds up as a cover girl, a style icon and artistic muse. We are also "told" that her high school teacher thinks she is unusually smart, but there was little in the actual description that made me feel she was all that smart (indeed, during a lot of the narrative she comes off as rather stupid, shallow and unlikable). I kept feeling that I was being "told" she was intelligent, sassy, and interesting, instead of actually experiencing it for myself. She was simultaneously supposed to represent a kind of universal "every girl", while being endlessly fascinating to everyone. Like the plot, I'm not sure that she successfully resolved herself between being a metaphor and a real character. The author just tried too hard to force the metaphors, force the symbolism, even force the plot, instead of letting the meanings (and story) just arise more naturally and lightly.
- Again, I'm not trying to bash the book. It's not "great", but there were things about it that I really liked, and I *really* appreciated the author taking on an interesting topic in a very, very easy-to-read and simple way. You could do a lot worse if you are looking for an easy way to get to know modern India.
(One last comment. In a way, the style of this book reminded me of Indian cooking. There is a touch of a lot of different flavors: melodrama, comedy, social commentary, farce, extreme seriousness, light-heartedness, mystery, etc.)
October 11, 2011
I wanted to like this book better than I did: it started out strong, with a young Indian woman from a mofussil (provincial) town on the brink of deciding to flee an impending marriage arranged by her family. An American teacher takes an interest and offers to help her go to Bangalore instead and make her own way in the world.
Once Anjali arrives in Bangalore, though, the story fell apart for me. While it dealt with interesting topics -- Indians immersing themselves in American culture in training for call centers, Anglo-Indians trying vainly to preserve some of the formality from the days of the Raj -- Anjali's character descended into a vain, shallow, boy-crazy ninny. The supporting characters (her teacher, Peter, and his lover Ali, Anjali's parents and sister, and even the crazy Anglo-Inidan landlady Minnie) were well-drawn, but having Anjali at the center fatally weakened the book for me.
I did learn a little about modern India, and I liked it for that. For a wonderfully written book with a young Indian woman on the brink of marriage in a very different era, I'd recommend Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy.
Reviewed by Jan, Kennedy Library staff
Maybe you will like this book more. Find it at Kennedy Library
Once Anjali arrives in Bangalore, though, the story fell apart for me. While it dealt with interesting topics -- Indians immersing themselves in American culture in training for call centers, Anglo-Indians trying vainly to preserve some of the formality from the days of the Raj -- Anjali's character descended into a vain, shallow, boy-crazy ninny. The supporting characters (her teacher, Peter, and his lover Ali, Anjali's parents and sister, and even the crazy Anglo-Inidan landlady Minnie) were well-drawn, but having Anjali at the center fatally weakened the book for me.
I did learn a little about modern India, and I liked it for that. For a wonderfully written book with a young Indian woman on the brink of marriage in a very different era, I'd recommend Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy.
Reviewed by Jan, Kennedy Library staff
Maybe you will like this book more. Find it at Kennedy Library
December 25, 2016
I loathed this book. It's going to be impossible for me to list all of the things I hated about this book. Also there are SPOILERS. And trigger warning for some upsetting things.
But let's start with the character. Anjali? I completely admit to having a total lack of empathy, because I spent most of the book wanting to hit her. I think maybe this was down to bad writing/characterization- I hope this was bad writing, because Anjali had little to no personality. She spent the book: hoping someone would give her a sense of identity (literally, in thought italics "tell me who I am"); hoping that a man would find her suitable, marry her, and solve her problems so she wouldn't have to (despite the book supposedly resting on the premise that she wanted to try for a more independent life- a different life even from her parents, her small town, etc,- I'm not saying independence means a life without marriage, etc., but it does involve some f*cking personal responsibility, not procrastinating getting a job in the hopes the guy you met for five bloody minutes will fall in love with you and marry you and he's rich so everything will be fine and the big scary world will make everything dandy and you totes don't have to worry anymore); being stupid and ignorant and not ever trying to fix that (which if this book had had any sense of reality, Anjali may or may not have ended up in Bangalore, and given her shocking and crippling ridiculous levels of self-indulged, purposeful ignorance and frankly ridiculous stupidity, would have left her an unidentified corpse in a back alley somewhere in, on a generous estimate, about 5 days flat- in any city, anywhere), and getting into messes which she always, miraculously got saved from because hell if anyone knows why, she was lucky enough to have lots of wealthy, well-connected friends who for some reason thought she was special and were willing to go out on a limb for her. So she was perpetually saved, and everything was dandy. Guardian f*cking angels. Everyone else can work hard and have no one help them ever, but this ridiculous twit, who hears "deep" things, doesn't understand them, the reader hears in her voice as she tells us that she doesn't understand them, then parrots said "deep" things back at other people, and has them tell her how incredibly deep she is! How they've underestimated her! And she goes back to Gairipur, her hometown, only 8 months after having left it, and is apparently, somehow, successful. Even though in the first 3 or 4 months the book takes us through, this girl does nothing. Nothing. Jobless. Nothing impressive. But apparently she's a gorram unicorn made of glitter and rainbows because while she keeps walking herself right into crap situations, she continuously gets saved and handed things that she doesn't have to work for and frankly doesn't deserve. How is this supposed to make me sympathetic to her? Oh! (and yes, some lack of coherency here, because, this book).
May we speak for a moment about the trope, oh that lovely trope; actually, there may be more than one damaging trope. But here, the first one. One of her roommates at Bagehot house is Muslim. It's the only extended picture/time you get in this book with a Muslim character. There are a couple of more subtle issues I could maybe go into with how she's depicted, but let's go with the big one: it turns out, Husseina is a terrorist. Yep. Her husband off in London that she was married to at age 13 by her wealthy father and taken out of her boarding school in Dubai for (just for a few days- married, then returned to school) and her are part of a plot to bomb Heathrow. The Muslim... is a terrorist. This book was published in 2011. Seriously? Not ok.
Also, and I've been thinking this over carefully: there was a rape fairly early in the book. Anjali is raped by her would-be suitor, and it is this event which causes her to run away to Bangalore. Only 50 pages into the book (something like that) the reader as expectations for how this is going to be explored. Rape and violence against women=serious problem most everywhere; this is an incredibly nuanced sector to navigate, and as with anything, made additionally complicated by the culture it's within, so it should attend to those idiosyncrasies as well. Yet... rape/trauma occurs, our character runs away to Bangalore. And that's it. There is no post-trauma growth. There is... I mean, to an extent, everything is a plot device in a book, right? So I suppose even if there was post-trauma growth and Anjali developed as a character from it that could be seen as using the rape as a plot device, and then, ugh, what the hell. And instead what we get is a rape that after it happens is just left there. Oh hey, I need something to get me to go off somewhere? Ok, rape, got it. Boom. Still plot device. So then maybe it's senseless, and maybe that was the point, except... that didn't seem the point. It seemed like it was useful. And it's not like Anjali remained silent about the whole matter; she told people; this wasn't some statement on long denial and societal silences due to shaming. Nope. Instead, not two days later, she's jumping in a car with a guy she just met who offered her a ride, and hoping since he's rich, maybe he'll like her and marry her and everything will be great. I mean, what? And while I totally don't want to dictate how someone should/could get over such a thing- we're exposed to a character, something traumatic happens (and yeah, you don't get to just throw rape around) and nothing is addressed about it. It's not dealt with, it's not not dealt with in a way that is just as telling; the character never seems to internally work through it; she doesn't... just nothing. Soooo, going off of that? Pretty sure rape was used as a handy plot device. And that? Not ok.
And for a moment... let's talk about Ali, and what happened to them. Because in a book where Muslim=terrorist, rape=plot device, and character=MarySue, let's talk about what fate befell the young Ali. So, first. Peter Champion is American, and he is Anjali's teacher. And she finds out (after he has to be really, really obvious about it) that he is stunningly happy because he has taken a lover- Ali- and Anjali is subsequently devastated. Also, it takes her forever to realize that this is a relationship. Now, the book had previously had hijra's in the village (transgender women)- and albeit Anjali was repulsed by them- but there I was, thinking that might be promising. Anyway. Peter and Ali are happy together. Later, we find out that Ali has run off for "back alley surgery", and Peter thinks Ali might be dead. Ali was never named hijra, but the implication (and there is only ever implication) is that Ali is transgender, and was seeking reassignment surgery. In the end of the book, we find that Ali is alive; but crippled, in a wheelchair, almost unrecognizably aged. Now, the Americans who were queer, they were fine- Peter and Rabi are left alone. But hold a minute. LGBT issues, especially if you want to examine transgender matters, are also nuanced, and that's true just about everywhere- and again, each culture/place is going to have its own idiosyncrasies. And instead, this book just throws this character in there doesn't give them a voice (because of language, mostly- I think Ali had maybe 4 lines of dialogue? but I'm taking that as subliminal, because have you noticed I've gotten on a pulpit and decided to be mad about everything?), makes anything that happens to them happen offscreen and vaguely, and then leaves them crippled which can be read or implied as a direct result of their actions for attempting to embody their identity? dare I say... by very nature of their queerness? Um. Nope. Not ok.
And while I'm thinking of things on the "way to go for total detachment and lack of characterization" list, I mean, this is vaguely funny, but Anjali may or may not have killed someone towards the end of the book. They were robbing the house, she knocked them both out, and one of them was in a coma and may-or-may-not-make-it. Someone she knew, as a matter of fact. Did Anjali feel or think anything about this? Was there any movement about this anywhere? Nope. Because Anjali is apparently soulless and is super empty headed. But oh so very special, don't forget that, everyone loves her.
The only thing that was maybe given some space was her father's suicide, and even then- yeah, not really. I mean, she did have like 4 total thoughts about it in the book, so for this story, that's huge! But if two of those thoughts are while you're on the floor in a shitty situation doing the equivalent of "life is wretched, I'm miserable, I just shouldn't bother anymore. Just let me die! I don't want to move" in the most melodramatic (and no, not an appeal for suicide) way possible, now using her father's suicide as a reason to pile more reasons for why she's wretched and shouldn't have to deal anymore instead of growing a f*cking backbone... that's not dealing with it. She finds out she was disowned to at the same time she was told of her father's suicide (not the same time as the floor melodrama) and there was no genuine work through of that. She felt vaguely guilty. Ok, there was that. Um. That's it? Seriously? Suicide. Suicide. We get nothing on the aftereffects of suicide? It didn't seem to be as much a mental health matter as a matter of honor, but nope nothing on that. Ok. Nothing on grief? Ok. Nothing on sudden loss? Ok. No real genuine emotion whatsoever except your own self-indulgent self-pity sometimes? Oh you like feeling pretty. Mmm. Ok. Nope. Sorry. Suicide as a convenient plot device? Not ok.
There are other things. The book was only 336 pages long; you may ask, how can there be other things? Oh, but there are. But do I even want to devote more of my time to this than I already have? This was supposed to show global v traditional values. Um, Bangalore as a virtual city. Modernity? I've been pondering this question; why was this book assigned? Sure, there are some things you can pick out of the book about modernity, about the post-colonial world, about the pull of the traditional versus the pull of the modern; the rift between local and global; the role of technology. But it's also 2016; there are a lot of books that deal with these themes, I think. We've been asking ourselves these questions, and how to reconcile them for a while now. Yet this book is apparently popular as a choice. Why?
Ok. I think that ends my rant about Miss New India. I honestly think I could have more things to say about it, but really, this has to stop.
But let's start with the character. Anjali? I completely admit to having a total lack of empathy, because I spent most of the book wanting to hit her. I think maybe this was down to bad writing/characterization- I hope this was bad writing, because Anjali had little to no personality. She spent the book: hoping someone would give her a sense of identity (literally, in thought italics "tell me who I am"); hoping that a man would find her suitable, marry her, and solve her problems so she wouldn't have to (despite the book supposedly resting on the premise that she wanted to try for a more independent life- a different life even from her parents, her small town, etc,- I'm not saying independence means a life without marriage, etc., but it does involve some f*cking personal responsibility, not procrastinating getting a job in the hopes the guy you met for five bloody minutes will fall in love with you and marry you and he's rich so everything will be fine and the big scary world will make everything dandy and you totes don't have to worry anymore); being stupid and ignorant and not ever trying to fix that (which if this book had had any sense of reality, Anjali may or may not have ended up in Bangalore, and given her shocking and crippling ridiculous levels of self-indulged, purposeful ignorance and frankly ridiculous stupidity, would have left her an unidentified corpse in a back alley somewhere in, on a generous estimate, about 5 days flat- in any city, anywhere), and getting into messes which she always, miraculously got saved from because hell if anyone knows why, she was lucky enough to have lots of wealthy, well-connected friends who for some reason thought she was special and were willing to go out on a limb for her. So she was perpetually saved, and everything was dandy. Guardian f*cking angels. Everyone else can work hard and have no one help them ever, but this ridiculous twit, who hears "deep" things, doesn't understand them, the reader hears in her voice as she tells us that she doesn't understand them, then parrots said "deep" things back at other people, and has them tell her how incredibly deep she is! How they've underestimated her! And she goes back to Gairipur, her hometown, only 8 months after having left it, and is apparently, somehow, successful. Even though in the first 3 or 4 months the book takes us through, this girl does nothing. Nothing. Jobless. Nothing impressive. But apparently she's a gorram unicorn made of glitter and rainbows because while she keeps walking herself right into crap situations, she continuously gets saved and handed things that she doesn't have to work for and frankly doesn't deserve. How is this supposed to make me sympathetic to her? Oh! (and yes, some lack of coherency here, because, this book).
May we speak for a moment about the trope, oh that lovely trope; actually, there may be more than one damaging trope. But here, the first one. One of her roommates at Bagehot house is Muslim. It's the only extended picture/time you get in this book with a Muslim character. There are a couple of more subtle issues I could maybe go into with how she's depicted, but let's go with the big one: it turns out, Husseina is a terrorist. Yep. Her husband off in London that she was married to at age 13 by her wealthy father and taken out of her boarding school in Dubai for (just for a few days- married, then returned to school) and her are part of a plot to bomb Heathrow. The Muslim... is a terrorist. This book was published in 2011. Seriously? Not ok.
Also, and I've been thinking this over carefully: there was a rape fairly early in the book. Anjali is raped by her would-be suitor, and it is this event which causes her to run away to Bangalore. Only 50 pages into the book (something like that) the reader as expectations for how this is going to be explored. Rape and violence against women=serious problem most everywhere; this is an incredibly nuanced sector to navigate, and as with anything, made additionally complicated by the culture it's within, so it should attend to those idiosyncrasies as well. Yet... rape/trauma occurs, our character runs away to Bangalore. And that's it. There is no post-trauma growth. There is... I mean, to an extent, everything is a plot device in a book, right? So I suppose even if there was post-trauma growth and Anjali developed as a character from it that could be seen as using the rape as a plot device, and then, ugh, what the hell. And instead what we get is a rape that after it happens is just left there. Oh hey, I need something to get me to go off somewhere? Ok, rape, got it. Boom. Still plot device. So then maybe it's senseless, and maybe that was the point, except... that didn't seem the point. It seemed like it was useful. And it's not like Anjali remained silent about the whole matter; she told people; this wasn't some statement on long denial and societal silences due to shaming. Nope. Instead, not two days later, she's jumping in a car with a guy she just met who offered her a ride, and hoping since he's rich, maybe he'll like her and marry her and everything will be great. I mean, what? And while I totally don't want to dictate how someone should/could get over such a thing- we're exposed to a character, something traumatic happens (and yeah, you don't get to just throw rape around) and nothing is addressed about it. It's not dealt with, it's not not dealt with in a way that is just as telling; the character never seems to internally work through it; she doesn't... just nothing. Soooo, going off of that? Pretty sure rape was used as a handy plot device. And that? Not ok.
And for a moment... let's talk about Ali, and what happened to them. Because in a book where Muslim=terrorist, rape=plot device, and character=MarySue, let's talk about what fate befell the young Ali. So, first. Peter Champion is American, and he is Anjali's teacher. And she finds out (after he has to be really, really obvious about it) that he is stunningly happy because he has taken a lover- Ali- and Anjali is subsequently devastated. Also, it takes her forever to realize that this is a relationship. Now, the book had previously had hijra's in the village (transgender women)- and albeit Anjali was repulsed by them- but there I was, thinking that might be promising. Anyway. Peter and Ali are happy together. Later, we find out that Ali has run off for "back alley surgery", and Peter thinks Ali might be dead. Ali was never named hijra, but the implication (and there is only ever implication) is that Ali is transgender, and was seeking reassignment surgery. In the end of the book, we find that Ali is alive; but crippled, in a wheelchair, almost unrecognizably aged. Now, the Americans who were queer, they were fine- Peter and Rabi are left alone. But hold a minute. LGBT issues, especially if you want to examine transgender matters, are also nuanced, and that's true just about everywhere- and again, each culture/place is going to have its own idiosyncrasies. And instead, this book just throws this character in there doesn't give them a voice (because of language, mostly- I think Ali had maybe 4 lines of dialogue? but I'm taking that as subliminal, because have you noticed I've gotten on a pulpit and decided to be mad about everything?), makes anything that happens to them happen offscreen and vaguely, and then leaves them crippled which can be read or implied as a direct result of their actions for attempting to embody their identity? dare I say... by very nature of their queerness? Um. Nope. Not ok.
And while I'm thinking of things on the "way to go for total detachment and lack of characterization" list, I mean, this is vaguely funny, but Anjali may or may not have killed someone towards the end of the book. They were robbing the house, she knocked them both out, and one of them was in a coma and may-or-may-not-make-it. Someone she knew, as a matter of fact. Did Anjali feel or think anything about this? Was there any movement about this anywhere? Nope. Because Anjali is apparently soulless and is super empty headed. But oh so very special, don't forget that, everyone loves her.
The only thing that was maybe given some space was her father's suicide, and even then- yeah, not really. I mean, she did have like 4 total thoughts about it in the book, so for this story, that's huge! But if two of those thoughts are while you're on the floor in a shitty situation doing the equivalent of "life is wretched, I'm miserable, I just shouldn't bother anymore. Just let me die! I don't want to move" in the most melodramatic (and no, not an appeal for suicide) way possible, now using her father's suicide as a reason to pile more reasons for why she's wretched and shouldn't have to deal anymore instead of growing a f*cking backbone... that's not dealing with it. She finds out she was disowned to at the same time she was told of her father's suicide (not the same time as the floor melodrama) and there was no genuine work through of that. She felt vaguely guilty. Ok, there was that. Um. That's it? Seriously? Suicide. Suicide. We get nothing on the aftereffects of suicide? It didn't seem to be as much a mental health matter as a matter of honor, but nope nothing on that. Ok. Nothing on grief? Ok. Nothing on sudden loss? Ok. No real genuine emotion whatsoever except your own self-indulgent self-pity sometimes? Oh you like feeling pretty. Mmm. Ok. Nope. Sorry. Suicide as a convenient plot device? Not ok.
There are other things. The book was only 336 pages long; you may ask, how can there be other things? Oh, but there are. But do I even want to devote more of my time to this than I already have? This was supposed to show global v traditional values. Um, Bangalore as a virtual city. Modernity? I've been pondering this question; why was this book assigned? Sure, there are some things you can pick out of the book about modernity, about the post-colonial world, about the pull of the traditional versus the pull of the modern; the rift between local and global; the role of technology. But it's also 2016; there are a lot of books that deal with these themes, I think. We've been asking ourselves these questions, and how to reconcile them for a while now. Yet this book is apparently popular as a choice. Why?
Ok. I think that ends my rant about Miss New India. I honestly think I could have more things to say about it, but really, this has to stop.
February 9, 2012
I loved this book. I may have been influenced by the fact that I was in Bangalore when I read it. For me, it captured the paradox of that city and of India in general: cows grazing on garbage beneath billboards advertising Tag Heuer Swiss watches; women in saris riding sidesaddle on the back of husbands' and sons' motorcycles, and women in jeans and helmets riding their own; chai wallahs and Barista cafes. Anjali, the protagonist, is convincing as a young woman who has escaped the traditional expectations of her family's marriage plans for her. She aspires to work in a call centre in Bangalore, but once in the city, she begins to see the hollowness of that dream and she begins to understand just how much is really possible. The novel has a strong narrative and, to me, avoids over-simplifying the desires of this young woman.
Read
April 2, 2021I went to a reading by Bharati Mukherjee at which she ready the opening chapter of this and liked it enough to try the book.
Part One (which ends with Anjali leaving Gauripur) was good but then things go a bit awry. Mukherjee crams so much as such can into the story - arranged marriages, rape, transvestites, gays, ex-pats, meditations on light and photography, call centres, terrorism and more - but the overall impact is that it all runs together. Part of the problem was Anjali/Angie herself, everyone's constantly telling that she's special and they expect great things of her but we never get a hint of what the specialness or spark is: except that she pretty and day dreams about a bigger life.
Part One (which ends with Anjali leaving Gauripur) was good but then things go a bit awry. Mukherjee crams so much as such can into the story - arranged marriages, rape, transvestites, gays, ex-pats, meditations on light and photography, call centres, terrorism and more - but the overall impact is that it all runs together. Part of the problem was Anjali/Angie herself, everyone's constantly telling that she's special and they expect great things of her but we never get a hint of what the specialness or spark is: except that she pretty and day dreams about a bigger life.
March 7, 2011
Anjali Bose is a small town girl in rural India who has big dreams. Her teacher, an ex-pat American, encourages her to make something of herself by heading to Bangalore, which they both see as the best new city in India. Anjali eventually heads there, and ends up in more trouble than she anticipated.
The writing in this novel is quite good, very poetic, in the first few chapters, but gradually heads downhill and becomes very pedestrian by the end. The problem, I think, is that there is just way too much plot in this book. The main characters deal with rape, international terrorism, false charges of murder, police brutality, arranged marriage, teenage runaways, divorce, gay men in India, botched back-alley sex change operations, prostitution, art theft, suicide, the role of outsourcing in the Indian economy, riots, the art of photography, homelessness, telecommunication centers, and more. By about the fourth major plot twist, there's no time for poetry anymore, and even for much of a reaction from the characters, because there's just too much happening. I think it could have been a much better book if it had just focused on a few of these issues instead of all of them.
That said, many of the characters here are quite appealing, particularly Anjali. And it certainly seems to be a very current look at Indian society (I learned, for instance, that the cool new dessert is cold coffee with ice cream, which I promptly went out to try, and I can inform you that it is delicious). Overall a fun read, but not a particularly deep one.
The writing in this novel is quite good, very poetic, in the first few chapters, but gradually heads downhill and becomes very pedestrian by the end. The problem, I think, is that there is just way too much plot in this book. The main characters deal with rape, international terrorism, false charges of murder, police brutality, arranged marriage, teenage runaways, divorce, gay men in India, botched back-alley sex change operations, prostitution, art theft, suicide, the role of outsourcing in the Indian economy, riots, the art of photography, homelessness, telecommunication centers, and more. By about the fourth major plot twist, there's no time for poetry anymore, and even for much of a reaction from the characters, because there's just too much happening. I think it could have been a much better book if it had just focused on a few of these issues instead of all of them.
That said, many of the characters here are quite appealing, particularly Anjali. And it certainly seems to be a very current look at Indian society (I learned, for instance, that the cool new dessert is cold coffee with ice cream, which I promptly went out to try, and I can inform you that it is delicious). Overall a fun read, but not a particularly deep one.
July 15, 2011
Nineteen year old Anjali Bose lives with her lower middle class family in a small village in India. Her father's dream is to arrange a marriage for her with a suitable boy but Anjali has bigger dreams than that. With the help of her English teacher, Anjali moves to Bangalore with the hopes of becoming a customer support specialist at a call center. She quickly learns that big-city life is not as easy and carefree as she thought it would be.
Anjali was a hard character to like. She floats through her life depending on her "award winning smile" to get her though tough situations. For some reason, the other characters are captivated by her and misread her vapidness as depth. I never quite understood why. Some of Anjali's decisions were just downright stupid and instead of sympathizing with her, I wanted to shake her.
I enjoyed reading about how India today is quite modern in some ways, yet still very traditional in others. I wish this book would have a had a glossary because the author uses quite a few words from different languages that I didn't know.
From what I understand, the author's previous books have gotten very good reviews. I look forward to reading one of her older books. This particular book was just okay.
Anjali was a hard character to like. She floats through her life depending on her "award winning smile" to get her though tough situations. For some reason, the other characters are captivated by her and misread her vapidness as depth. I never quite understood why. Some of Anjali's decisions were just downright stupid and instead of sympathizing with her, I wanted to shake her.
I enjoyed reading about how India today is quite modern in some ways, yet still very traditional in others. I wish this book would have a had a glossary because the author uses quite a few words from different languages that I didn't know.
From what I understand, the author's previous books have gotten very good reviews. I look forward to reading one of her older books. This particular book was just okay.
March 16, 2017
I rate this a 2.5.
I was in the mood for something whimsical and fun so I chose this book knowing little going into it. However it quite didn't meet my expectations.
The story started off enchantingly good with the prospects of suitors for Anjali, then it lost its luster half way through. It went from a romantic tale to a murder mystery real quick. Once Anjali moves to Bangalore all hell breaks lose and the story seems to fall apart somewhere in the middle. There was just way too much melodramatics and bantering going on in this 300 page novel. The political conversations comes off contrived and forced, which drags the story. But Anjali's ditsy personality keeps the story afloat with its light heartedness. The author's writing style is charmingly smooth, however the subplots suffers a lot. It felt like the deaths and misfortunes happens suddenly with little resolution.
And what was up with Anjali having the hots for every guy that she encountered? There was the photographer, the professor, the columnist, the magazine photographer, and the sexual assaulter.. all of whom didn't seem romantically interested in her, but in her deluded mind she felt different.
Synopsis: The Story is about a nineteen year old girl named Anjali Bose, who runs away from home due to an impending arranged marriage and sets out for the big city life of Bangalore. Once there, she has aspirations to become a call agent to put her impeccable English to use. However, things quickly go south when she meets some city slickers who takes advantage of her countryside naïve ways.
Overall, it's an easy, fun read with a light Bollywood romance flare. However I wouldn't say its a beach read...more like a lazy Sunday afternoon read. It took me a couple of days to finish it. I don't regret reading it, but I was glad once it was over. The ending was meh. The author tries to get deep and profound on the last couple of pages. Throughout the story we don't see Anjali grow much mentally and come into her own, which was a bit of let a down. However I liked the traditional vs modern India aspects and the LGBT themes.
I recommend this book if you liked The Sleeping Dictionary, Mansfield Park and The white Tiger.
I was in the mood for something whimsical and fun so I chose this book knowing little going into it. However it quite didn't meet my expectations.
The story started off enchantingly good with the prospects of suitors for Anjali, then it lost its luster half way through. It went from a romantic tale to a murder mystery real quick. Once Anjali moves to Bangalore all hell breaks lose and the story seems to fall apart somewhere in the middle. There was just way too much melodramatics and bantering going on in this 300 page novel. The political conversations comes off contrived and forced, which drags the story. But Anjali's ditsy personality keeps the story afloat with its light heartedness. The author's writing style is charmingly smooth, however the subplots suffers a lot. It felt like the deaths and misfortunes happens suddenly with little resolution.
And what was up with Anjali having the hots for every guy that she encountered? There was the photographer, the professor, the columnist, the magazine photographer, and the sexual assaulter.. all of whom didn't seem romantically interested in her, but in her deluded mind she felt different.
Synopsis: The Story is about a nineteen year old girl named Anjali Bose, who runs away from home due to an impending arranged marriage and sets out for the big city life of Bangalore. Once there, she has aspirations to become a call agent to put her impeccable English to use. However, things quickly go south when she meets some city slickers who takes advantage of her countryside naïve ways.
Overall, it's an easy, fun read with a light Bollywood romance flare. However I wouldn't say its a beach read...more like a lazy Sunday afternoon read. It took me a couple of days to finish it. I don't regret reading it, but I was glad once it was over. The ending was meh. The author tries to get deep and profound on the last couple of pages. Throughout the story we don't see Anjali grow much mentally and come into her own, which was a bit of let a down. However I liked the traditional vs modern India aspects and the LGBT themes.
I recommend this book if you liked The Sleeping Dictionary, Mansfield Park and The white Tiger.
July 3, 2012
http://mariesbookgarden.blogspot.com/...
I picked this up at the library, intrigued by the premise and undeterred by the lukewarm (and sometimes outright negative) reviews on Goodreads. A novel about Bangalore, call centers, and the new Indian woman? Sure--sounds promising. I've read other Mukherjee novels and liked them, so I thought this was worth a try.
Sadly, this was not a winner. The main character, Anjali, is not likable and she's completely shallow...which I could live with, perhaps, if I cared anything about what happened to these characters. Once she made it to Bangalore, I lost track of some of the characters--they just were not drawn vividly enough--and then when the Bagehot House fell, I began skimming.
Why were all these people helping her? Anjali was ungrateful, not particularly talented, and lackadaisical, but everything seemed to go her way in the end, which seemed too good to be true.
Minnie, Anjali's obnoxiously snobby landlady, reminded me of a woman who ran a hostel in Jaipur, India. I believe she was Anglo-Indian as well. I remember that she "kindly" invited us to stay to dinner. The next morning when we were ready to leave, she presented us with an exorbitant bill for that dinner!
This book could have been so much better. I'm fascinated with the idea of the new India, but this was an uneven, shoddy attempt for a well-known and accomplished author. Disappointing...and glad to be done with it.
I picked this up at the library, intrigued by the premise and undeterred by the lukewarm (and sometimes outright negative) reviews on Goodreads. A novel about Bangalore, call centers, and the new Indian woman? Sure--sounds promising. I've read other Mukherjee novels and liked them, so I thought this was worth a try.
Sadly, this was not a winner. The main character, Anjali, is not likable and she's completely shallow...which I could live with, perhaps, if I cared anything about what happened to these characters. Once she made it to Bangalore, I lost track of some of the characters--they just were not drawn vividly enough--and then when the Bagehot House fell, I began skimming.
Why were all these people helping her? Anjali was ungrateful, not particularly talented, and lackadaisical, but everything seemed to go her way in the end, which seemed too good to be true.
Minnie, Anjali's obnoxiously snobby landlady, reminded me of a woman who ran a hostel in Jaipur, India. I believe she was Anglo-Indian as well. I remember that she "kindly" invited us to stay to dinner. The next morning when we were ready to leave, she presented us with an exorbitant bill for that dinner!
This book could have been so much better. I'm fascinated with the idea of the new India, but this was an uneven, shoddy attempt for a well-known and accomplished author. Disappointing...and glad to be done with it.
January 23, 2012
2.5 stars if Goodreads allowed halves. I was really intrigued to learn about a young Indian woman's journey from bucking the chauvinist old school society where her father was to choose her husband from newspaper ads to a new independent life in Bangalore where the "new India" is emerging and giving women a chance to choose their own destiny. But ultimately I really struggled to identify with Anjali. I think she was supposed to come across as a Bridget Jones type character, someone a bit silly but endearing. Instead she comes off as dim and worthless when it comes to actually pursuing a career. I guess I wanted a narrative involving a story of a woman with newfound freedoms realizing her potential, but that's just not this novel. I will say it was interesting, and sobering, to learn about the American imitation classes the call center agents take, and I liked that the book raised questions about the cost of the New India - i.e. being always beholden to the US. But overall, the book just didn't enchant me.
September 6, 2011
Some things work really well in this novel; for instance, the author does a great job of depicting the internal conflict of modern-day India, with revered rituals and traditions on the one hand, and technology/modernity on the other. Anjali, the main character, represents the generation caught in between these two poles of identity--modern vs. traditional.
Unfortunately, the character of Anjali is also where the novel breaks down. She is continually influenced by other people. She thinks she knows what she wants but can never bring herself to totally go for it. Other people tell her who she is/should be, but she never becomes that person. Instead, Anjali falls back into old patterns of wanting to find a suitable husband. Her character, despite some big changes, does not seem to grow or evolve.
Then, suddenly, in the last chapter, she is enlightened?!? There is not a true sense of how she got there mentally or emotionally on her own. Overall, just a bit disappointed.
Unfortunately, the character of Anjali is also where the novel breaks down. She is continually influenced by other people. She thinks she knows what she wants but can never bring herself to totally go for it. Other people tell her who she is/should be, but she never becomes that person. Instead, Anjali falls back into old patterns of wanting to find a suitable husband. Her character, despite some big changes, does not seem to grow or evolve.
Then, suddenly, in the last chapter, she is enlightened?!? There is not a true sense of how she got there mentally or emotionally on her own. Overall, just a bit disappointed.
August 18, 2011
I'm not sure what to say about this book. I really enjoyed the social commentary and learning about Indian culture. However, the overall storyline was a little weird. It kind of reminded me of Bridget Jones and I do not mean that in a good way. The main character gets herself into various predicaments and then some man comes riding to the rescue. It just seemed a little facile. Rather than dealing with a difficult narrative, just invoke Prince Charming.
However, it was an easy read, it was a fast read, and I do feel like I learned something from it. I'm glad I read the book and I would read other works by this author in the future.
However, it was an easy read, it was a fast read, and I do feel like I learned something from it. I'm glad I read the book and I would read other works by this author in the future.
May 19, 2018
I don’t quite get this book. It is oddly written, with lots of disconnect in both style and plot details. The prose jumps from narration to internal dialogue with nary a by your leave. In the story, I would think I understood a situation, then a throwaway comment 1 or 100 pages later would make me question what actually happened. One spot near the end implies that many years must have passed, since radical city-wide changes seem to have taken place, then the next section reveals it has only been 8 months.
The jumps from narration to internal dialogue point up the cluelessness, self-absorption and banality of the main character, who is supposed to be something special, but my main takeaway in regard to her specialness is that umpteen-watt smile that she throws around whenever she doesn’t know what else to do. I think the author might have been aiming for wry humor in many cases, but the effect was more odd than funny.
Anyway, in practice, Anjali’s supposed specialness revolves around her willingness to rebel against a traditional small-town life trajectory, part of a wave of change spreading through the young women of India at the time the book was set (early 2000’s, it seems). Presenting a portrait of “Anjali-as-representative-of-culture-change” is the book’s focus rather than any kind of realistic character study. For instance, what seems like a pretty devastating incident happens to her early on, but she doesn’t react with the emotional force you might expect. The event catalyzes the plot, but that’s close to the end of it, as far as any violent reaction is concerned. There is a subsequent series of pretty-darn-horrible events related to her family, and though lip-service is paid to her feeling bad, trauma is dealt with in a shallow way overall.
This novel still gets 3.5 stars from me, though, because I liked reading it. I was confused sometimes, and Anjali was an immature ninny, but the Bangalore setting was pretty fascinating. Ancient mansions and high-end real estate, auto-rickshaws and fancy cars, etc. etc. I wish more of the story had taken place in an actual call center—what the heck is it like to work in one of those places anyway?—but since this is the first time I’ve ever seen the topic come up in a novel at all, I can’t complain too much about that. It is interesting how many languages are spoken, and how meaning is attached to which languages people speak. Everyone instantly knows everyone else’s religion and background (and makes assumptions about their abilities and character) simply by virtue of their last names. The book presents a picture of India in the midst of radical cultural evolution, in a time period I hadn’t read about before in fiction, so worthwhile for that aspect alone.
The jumps from narration to internal dialogue point up the cluelessness, self-absorption and banality of the main character, who is supposed to be something special, but my main takeaway in regard to her specialness is that umpteen-watt smile that she throws around whenever she doesn’t know what else to do. I think the author might have been aiming for wry humor in many cases, but the effect was more odd than funny.
Anyway, in practice, Anjali’s supposed specialness revolves around her willingness to rebel against a traditional small-town life trajectory, part of a wave of change spreading through the young women of India at the time the book was set (early 2000’s, it seems). Presenting a portrait of “Anjali-as-representative-of-culture-change” is the book’s focus rather than any kind of realistic character study. For instance, what seems like a pretty devastating incident happens to her early on, but she doesn’t react with the emotional force you might expect. The event catalyzes the plot, but that’s close to the end of it, as far as any violent reaction is concerned. There is a subsequent series of pretty-darn-horrible events related to her family, and though lip-service is paid to her feeling bad, trauma is dealt with in a shallow way overall.
This novel still gets 3.5 stars from me, though, because I liked reading it. I was confused sometimes, and Anjali was an immature ninny, but the Bangalore setting was pretty fascinating. Ancient mansions and high-end real estate, auto-rickshaws and fancy cars, etc. etc. I wish more of the story had taken place in an actual call center—what the heck is it like to work in one of those places anyway?—but since this is the first time I’ve ever seen the topic come up in a novel at all, I can’t complain too much about that. It is interesting how many languages are spoken, and how meaning is attached to which languages people speak. Everyone instantly knows everyone else’s religion and background (and makes assumptions about their abilities and character) simply by virtue of their last names. The book presents a picture of India in the midst of radical cultural evolution, in a time period I hadn’t read about before in fiction, so worthwhile for that aspect alone.
October 29, 2019
I'd heard a lot of good things about this book. So it was somewhat a disappointment when I finally read through it. I just couldn't bring myself to like the protagonist, Anjali, Angie, and that spoiled the rest of the book for me.
It started off quite well, with Anjali being in her hometown and trying to figure out what she wanted for her life. Somewhat traditional because she wants to appease her parents and have an "ease" of life so to speak, she entertains their plans for her and a potential marriage. But the other side of her doesn't want that life, and encouraged by a past teacher, seeks more adventure and independence. The second part of the book, in which she gets that adventure was so rushed, hurried, and confusing; and Anjali becomes that unlikable protagonist to me.
For characterization, I actually thought all of the side characters were pretty well developed. I liked Mr. Champion and his significant other. I thought they were the best characters of the whole book. The rest, while not quite as well developed, still had decent background and motivations. It was Anjali I didn't understand. Her way of interacting with the world, and the decisions she made, were kind of nonsensical to me. I could see it argued that her upbringing and trauma made her act the way she did, but I just found her unauthentic as a whole.
Ok, but not really the book for me. I'd rate this as solidly average.
Review by M. Reynard 2019
It started off quite well, with Anjali being in her hometown and trying to figure out what she wanted for her life. Somewhat traditional because she wants to appease her parents and have an "ease" of life so to speak, she entertains their plans for her and a potential marriage. But the other side of her doesn't want that life, and encouraged by a past teacher, seeks more adventure and independence. The second part of the book, in which she gets that adventure was so rushed, hurried, and confusing; and Anjali becomes that unlikable protagonist to me.
For characterization, I actually thought all of the side characters were pretty well developed. I liked Mr. Champion and his significant other. I thought they were the best characters of the whole book. The rest, while not quite as well developed, still had decent background and motivations. It was Anjali I didn't understand. Her way of interacting with the world, and the decisions she made, were kind of nonsensical to me. I could see it argued that her upbringing and trauma made her act the way she did, but I just found her unauthentic as a whole.
Ok, but not really the book for me. I'd rate this as solidly average.
Review by M. Reynard 2019
November 29, 2017
I quite liked this book which was generally light in tone and easy to read. This is the story of Anjani, a young woman who lives her unpreposessing home town and her conventional life to seek fame and fortune in the IT driven new India. Driven by the ambitions of her fomer teacher, an American who came to India in the sixties and stayed on, and by a stunning act of violence perpetrated.by a would-be suitor, Anjali goes to Bangalore to seek fame and fortune and succeeds despite many setbacks, including her own passivity. The only problem with this tale, as many reviewers have mentioned is that by herself, Anjali is not a very intetesting character. Indeed it is difficult to imagine why so many people become so invested in her including her American mentor, a rich and interesting.Prince charming of a guy who falls for her, and a pair of highflying Indian women who help propel her career. In fact Anjali seems little.more than a tabula rasa n which other project their dreams. Except for her flight from home and harrowing journey across country, she shows little courage and initiative once in her new home. However the contrast betweem the teeming masses of the traditional India and the new consumerist nation propelled by IT and call-centres is well drawn.
January 30, 2019
This book went a lot of places. None of them were particularly compelling, at least as they were told. I didn't see any evidence of it being translated from another language but some of the turns of phrase were awkward in a way that often indicates that - and there were whole sections featuring incredibly dense, antiquated language that didn't fit the setting or voice of the main character - would a 19 year old girl ever use the word "propinquity"?? She acknowledged whole sentences not making any sense to her but that one seemed to slip by. I get that this is set in India so maybe it's just a cultural divide (or just indicative of the differences in English dialects) but it made the whole book a bit of a chore.
September 20, 2024
This was somewhere between insufferable and laughably bad. The author replaced plot with a series of traumas interspersed with really boring, repetitive dialogue and description. I don't know what this had to do with my ethics and policy class but I'm really glad I chose to skim the second half... don't think I missed out on anything.
February 24, 2012
All those off shore call centres - don't we just love to hate them and for all sorts of reasons. But probably what is the most annoying thing is they claim to be speaking to you from your home town and you just know that aint so. And do we ever think about the person behind the voice so desperately trying to sound Kiwi, American, English, Australian? Not really, because we just know that the voice is just another Indian voice out of probably a million voices in that vast land mass working in a call centre. Google 'call centres India': reading what is there will provide a most informative backdrop to this story.
But this story is not about call centres and not really about the people who work in them. It is about a young girl who wants to work in one, who thinks that once she has that job with a steady income, she has made it, she has escaped. Escaped from her preordained provincial rural small town life, escaped from the marriage that her parents are desperately trying to arrange for her, escaped from the tyranny of a future mother-in-law, domestic drudgery, and the chance to use her intelligence and sparkling personality.
And this is the core of the story and of so much of what modern day Indian society is like, especially for young women with some education and expectations. How do you marry the past with the future? Often one gets these sorts of conflicts when people from one culture or ethnic group move into another and the younger generation rebels against the values and expectations of their parents. But in India, this is happening within the country itself, as young people are better educated than their parents, see the Western consumer culture infiltrating all aspects of their lives, and want a piece of it.
So who is Miss New India? She perfectly captures this conflict. She is Anjali Bose, second and unmarried daughter of a traditional lower middle class couple who live in a small town in India's poorest province Bihar. Her father has always been a lowly clerk in the enormous and cumbersome bureaucracy of one India's many bureaucracies. His over riding mission is to have Anjali married off, and unlike his older daughter who was married and left her husband and whose name is now never mentioned, he hopes his daughter will be happy, that the marriage will be fruitful and that when he dies there is a son-in-law to preside over his funeral in good Hindu tradition. In her head however, Anjali is Angie. Beautiful, irresistible to men, perfectly poised to take on the world thanks to her excellent education from an American man who has lived and taught in the town for many years. He sees the potential in his young student and encourages her to take control of her life. Which she does.
After a 'journey', she finds herself in Bangalore, or Bang-a-lot as it is called by the young who have migrated from all over the country to escape the lives their parents have carved out for them. In Bangalore they have jobs, money, Western clothes, cell phones, a phone number, plenty of eating and drinking places to go to, some even a car, and no one to curb or manage their behaviour. No wonder the place is called Bang-a-lot.
So Angie finds herself literally thrown in the deep end of this very cosmopolitan, over populated, fast moving and to her eyes very sophisticated call centre city. She finds life is not quite as peachy as she has been led to believe it would be. How surprising. Constantly she is having to marry what she sees going around her with whether she should be doing it or not, what her parents would think, what her teacher would think. In fact I think she even stops thinking at times and just does! The New India is really quite a different place from the Old India.
So her life experience might be completely different from mine, but I found Anjali/Angie intensely irritating and stupid. Her whole life as she wants it to be has been learnt through Bollywood movies, although how she knows what to do on her first kiss when those movies never actually show one I don't know! As one would expect she is incredibly naive, having come from some little town in the middle of nowhere, and I really expected with her innocence of the world, and her misplaced trust in those around her, that more bad stuff would have happened. Parts of it are so fantastic it is ridiculous, and just like a Bollywood movie there is something momentous going on all the time.
But nevertheless, despite the contrived story line, there is actually a very good message in this book. The author is Indian herself. Fortunately for her, her parents saw the value of a good education and she now lives in America, as a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. I would say she is very well placed to be able to write such a story, having a foot in both worlds. Having lived in Bangalore myself, I was instantly drawn to reading this book. I can see exactly where the author is coming from and felt how she wrote about the city was very real. But I just wish she had chosen a character more believable and smarter than she thinks she actually is!
But this story is not about call centres and not really about the people who work in them. It is about a young girl who wants to work in one, who thinks that once she has that job with a steady income, she has made it, she has escaped. Escaped from her preordained provincial rural small town life, escaped from the marriage that her parents are desperately trying to arrange for her, escaped from the tyranny of a future mother-in-law, domestic drudgery, and the chance to use her intelligence and sparkling personality.
And this is the core of the story and of so much of what modern day Indian society is like, especially for young women with some education and expectations. How do you marry the past with the future? Often one gets these sorts of conflicts when people from one culture or ethnic group move into another and the younger generation rebels against the values and expectations of their parents. But in India, this is happening within the country itself, as young people are better educated than their parents, see the Western consumer culture infiltrating all aspects of their lives, and want a piece of it.
So who is Miss New India? She perfectly captures this conflict. She is Anjali Bose, second and unmarried daughter of a traditional lower middle class couple who live in a small town in India's poorest province Bihar. Her father has always been a lowly clerk in the enormous and cumbersome bureaucracy of one India's many bureaucracies. His over riding mission is to have Anjali married off, and unlike his older daughter who was married and left her husband and whose name is now never mentioned, he hopes his daughter will be happy, that the marriage will be fruitful and that when he dies there is a son-in-law to preside over his funeral in good Hindu tradition. In her head however, Anjali is Angie. Beautiful, irresistible to men, perfectly poised to take on the world thanks to her excellent education from an American man who has lived and taught in the town for many years. He sees the potential in his young student and encourages her to take control of her life. Which she does.
After a 'journey', she finds herself in Bangalore, or Bang-a-lot as it is called by the young who have migrated from all over the country to escape the lives their parents have carved out for them. In Bangalore they have jobs, money, Western clothes, cell phones, a phone number, plenty of eating and drinking places to go to, some even a car, and no one to curb or manage their behaviour. No wonder the place is called Bang-a-lot.
So Angie finds herself literally thrown in the deep end of this very cosmopolitan, over populated, fast moving and to her eyes very sophisticated call centre city. She finds life is not quite as peachy as she has been led to believe it would be. How surprising. Constantly she is having to marry what she sees going around her with whether she should be doing it or not, what her parents would think, what her teacher would think. In fact I think she even stops thinking at times and just does! The New India is really quite a different place from the Old India.
So her life experience might be completely different from mine, but I found Anjali/Angie intensely irritating and stupid. Her whole life as she wants it to be has been learnt through Bollywood movies, although how she knows what to do on her first kiss when those movies never actually show one I don't know! As one would expect she is incredibly naive, having come from some little town in the middle of nowhere, and I really expected with her innocence of the world, and her misplaced trust in those around her, that more bad stuff would have happened. Parts of it are so fantastic it is ridiculous, and just like a Bollywood movie there is something momentous going on all the time.
But nevertheless, despite the contrived story line, there is actually a very good message in this book. The author is Indian herself. Fortunately for her, her parents saw the value of a good education and she now lives in America, as a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. I would say she is very well placed to be able to write such a story, having a foot in both worlds. Having lived in Bangalore myself, I was instantly drawn to reading this book. I can see exactly where the author is coming from and felt how she wrote about the city was very real. But I just wish she had chosen a character more believable and smarter than she thinks she actually is!
March 17, 2017
Notes:
anything that teased out infinity.
And yet his influence hangs over some of us like the vault of heaven.
He went to villages and recorded long litanies of anecdotal history, family memories verging on fantasy, and, especially, local songs. (Note: What a rich life!)
The conventional form of Indian femininity projects itself through long-lashed, kohl-rimmed, startled black eyes. Modest women know to glance upward from a slightly bowed head. (Note: lol this is kinda true but also so 90s I don't think anyone in our generation knows how to do this Or maybe we all do an dare just waiting to take off our shells of modern hood?)
the dense clutter of handcarts and bicycles: swollen, restless India on the move.
But not like typical Indian students, those driven rote learners with one obsessive goal: admission to an Indian Institute of Technology.
Family weddings and funerals are the incontestable duties and rituals of Indian life.
Even at nineteen, Anjali was determined not to yield her right to happiness.
“What you wear, how you talk, no wonder! What good boy is going to look twice?”(Note: Oops who needed good boys anyway But omg this is so true)
"Why do you look at people's eyes" Whee am I suppose to look their feet!?
You’ll have kids and a husband who’s jealous of your intelligence and your English and won’t let you out of the house, and that would break my heart.”
Anjali was tuned in to her culture’s consolations for the denial of autonomy.
pleasure? How can you move ahead when all your energy is spent looking over your shoulder? They would never make progress; they were
boys in white shirts with secure prospects in a moribund bureaucracy.
It was not the proper time for Anjali to bring up the known fact that sex determination is male-linked.
negotiation, a girl has a hundred ways of disappointing, then it’s tumble, tumble down a hole or worse, like Alice in Wonderland.
school grades too high (potentially showing too much personal ambition)
But she trusted the boy; he wouldn’t laugh at her.Read more at location
His tone was offhand, conversational, as though Claude Monet and his weird cathedral in a town in France were the subject of everyone’s light-hearted conversation.
but at that precise moment she was still suspended between here and there, between now and then, and Rabi snapped the picture. Years later, people would say that it made a beautiful composition, enigmatic, Mona Lisa–like.
and no one had ever spoken to her about the nature of truth or art, or assumed she cared or knew anything about it.
Truths were handed down from the beginning of time and they held true forever, not for one five-hundredth of a second.
he had learned a Russian word, Chekhovian, from something he’d said about the Indian social and political
She was luminous and mysterious, a synthetic bonbon of indeterminate age. Shaky was a master of light and shadow.
Peter Champion gulped them both down before tearing two sheets off a notebook he carried in his
she simply could not imagine carrying on civilized discourse with anyone from Asansol.
was like voluntarily entering a black hole, especially the black hole of central India called Madhya Pradesh,
could have sat anywhere took the aisle seat next to her and almost immediately put his hand over her breast, as though he owned it, as though it was something he’d bought along with his
no questions and requested no favors—posed, in fact, as a tourist on the model of an Indo-American
helper. If hell and all the citizens of damnation had an Indian address, it was here. If
The numb certitudes of her life: I have no family. The only money in my pocket comes from a man whose world is alien to mine and whom I’ll never see again. I have no job, no skills. School teaches little.Read more at location 1120 • Delete this highlight
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Five hundred and sixty more kilometers to go. Two thousand kilometers behind her.Read more at location 1127 • Delete this highlight
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She, so proud of her Hindi and English and even, if pushed, her Bangla, had been struck deaf and dumb.Read more at location 1134 • Delete this highlight
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Mechanical cranes controlled by a single man, not the long lines of women and children tipping their small bowls of concrete.Read more at location 1145 • Delete this highlight
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novel by a southern writer named Narayan, set in a village—Malgudi, the writer called it—probablyRead more at location 1155 • Delete this highlight
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So, who was responsible for something as roaringly capitalistic as Bangalore?Read more at location 1159 • Delete this highlight
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and through the crack-of-dawn mayhem caused by rural India assaulting the city.Read more at location 1173 • Delete this highlight
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Another MG Road. Peter Champion once said, “Every American town has its Main, Oak, and Elm, just like India has its Gandhi-Nehru-Shastri.”Read more at location 1228 • Delete this highlight
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A gaggle of voices floated down to her, tinkly voices of hyperconfident breakfasters, chattering in American English. Finally, a languageRead more at location 1248 • Delete this highlight
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with familiar cadences! SheRead more at location 1249 • Delete this highlight
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Suzie. “I don’t know why they let those guys into the States. University of Illinois used toRead more at location 1332 • Delete this highlight
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have some class. I keep hoping I get him—he won’t have the balls to call back again.” Mike started singing, “I get no kick from Champagne.” He had a surprising voice: deep, American. “Mukky Sharma lives in Champaign.” “Well, no wonder he’s crazy,” Angie said, “living in Champagne!”Read more at location 1333 • Delete this highlight
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Mickey?’ What he really wants to know is, what’s the weather like in Bangalore today? What’s playing at the Galaxy? Do we still hang out at Forum? What about Styx or Pub World?Read more at location 1344 • Delete this highlight
Note: Lol that mall! I've been there Edit
skimps on comforts and counts only the rupees in her pocketbook and not the dreams inside herRead more at location 1396 • Delete this highlight
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Let the story line of her life write itself! Like a typical Bollywood heroine—the eternal innocent, the trusting small-town girl placing herself at the mercy of a confident, benevolent older man—she climbed into the stranger’s car. She’d seen this movie a hundred times.Read more at location 1407 • Delete this highlight
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He’d taken off for Bangalore because making it here meant making it anywhere in the world.Read more at location 1460 • Delete this highlight
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“Those are things known only in Bangalore. We have the building codes for every city in the world. We have ecological surveys and subsoil analysesRead more at location 1471 • Delete this highlight
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So he inspects buildings that aren’t there, in cities he’s never been to.Read more at location 1478 • Delete this highlight
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His explanation was that the original builders and later occupiers had refused to believe—or perhaps had known only too well—that they would never see England again.Read more at location 1547 • Delete this highlight
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Anjali visualized the developers as vultures circling a dying cow. No room for sentimentality in this city, she realized.Read more at location 1572 • Delete this highlight
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A job is the key to happiness, she calculated. A job brings respect and power. Money brings transformation. Stagnation creates doubt and tyranny. Money transforms a girl from Gauripur into a woman from Bangalore.Read more at location 1601 • Delete this highlight
Note: Isn't this literally the neoliberal feminist idea, though? Edit
Everything seemed secondhand, even the air. Yet she sensed that every object had once held immense value. For some reason she was suddenly reminded of Peter Champion’s words: every note a symphony.Read more at location 1620 • Delete this highlight
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but he described himself as an iconoclast. “Break your feudal habit of revering masters and elders,”Read more at location 1803 • Delete this highlight
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You could run away from home, but not from the rituals of family.Read more at location 1858 • Delete this highlight
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suffered. She saw her parents still cowering and still recovering from the scars of colonialism and the dazzling new Bangalore as a city of total amnesia.Read more at location 2029 • Delete this highlight
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outsourcing. I wish the prosperity was rooted to something. I wish it built something beyond glass monuments. It seems as flimsy as a kite or a balloon. What comes drifting in with the winds might just as easily drift away.”Read more at location 2319 • Delete this highlight
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Right then and there Anjali fell in love with Mr. GG. He was soRead more at location 2348 • Delete this highlight
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But Mr. GG cut through Minnie’s veils of nonsensical nostalgia and poor Mr. Champion’s middle-aged missionary zeal, and he presented a future she longedRead more at location 2349 • Delete this highlight
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“That’s it. We’re soldiers in a social revolution.”Read more at location 2382 • Delete this highlight
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She’d grown up with chaos masquerading as coherence.Read more at location 2520 • Delete this highlight
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Bollywood has no use for India’s women, apart from ornamentation.Read more at location 2707 • Delete this highlight
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Bose, 1 Kew Gardens, as well as sign into the logbook; took her visitor’s badge out of the guard’s hand; and clippedRead more at location 2984 • Delete this highlight
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She suddenly wondered if Indians born and raised in America, Rabi Chatterjee, for instance, lost that ability to identify ethnicity just by looking at an Indian face.Read more at location 3050 • Delete this highlight
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“I am in love. With Bangalore.”Read more at location 3156 • Delete this highlight
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“Appearances can be deceiving,” he said, smiling. “I trust in only the durability of the virtual universe.”Read more at location 3178 • Delete this highlight
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Park. She was a woman with a phone and a glow from being in love with love.Read more at location 3197 • Delete this highlight
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and she realized she wasn’t safe at all.Read more at location 3213 • Delete this highlight
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Things move slowly, like glaciers, until they erupt like tsunamis.Read more at location 3224 • Delete this highlight
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it might as well be to a well-established man who saved me and performed favors and kindnesses. A well-connected man who would owe me. ARead more at location 3233 • Delete this highlight
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ghost women, spidery thin, fighting each other for access to the drivers, and she hated the price of being a woman, and India, and every man she’d ever known.Read more at location 3241 • Delete this highlight
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Maybe all the men in white shirts she passed on the streets had been doing the same thing aRead more at location 3269 • Delete this highlight
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far. She wanted him to keep talking, keep driving, keep lusting. She wanted to love even more than to be loved.Read more at location 3285 • Delete this highlight
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Could the teacher include a lesson in optimism enhancement?Read more at location 3325 • Delete this highlight
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The TV episodes depressed her.Read more at location 3363 • Delete this highlight
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dollars. Insofar as reality can be composedRead more at location 3388 • Delete this highlight
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of raw data, Anjali had created Rock City. The rest of her virtual life was inspiredRead more at location 3389 • Delete this highlight
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Her crime was that of constant, heedless wanting; wanting too much; wanting more of everything, especially happiness.Read more at location 3727 • Delete this highlight
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To a trust-fund Californian photographer who played at slumming, life in India might be all light and angle, but if you are an overreaching penniless Bihari, the light is murky, the angles knife sharp.Read more at location 3743 • Delete this highlight
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copies. I am just a copy. InRead more at location 3775 • Delete this highlight
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You think you’re moving forward, you think you’re beginning to figure things out, and it’s all a trap.Read more at location 3781 • Delete this highlight
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Her father dreaded—had dreaded—looking foolish.Read more at location 3832 • Delete this highlight
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and insisted that only his wife could cook rice perfectly. Read more at location 3993
Note: Ugh men why do patriarchal Edit
Their homes and their neighborhood would reflect the best of the West they’d grown rich in and the romanticized best of the country they’d abandoned as ambitious young men.Read more at location 4009 • Delete this highlight
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freshness before haggling over the price with a fishmonger. Curried Read more at location 4043
Note: She's still so guilty Edit
She’d never felt so comfortable with a boy. Why can’t we get what we most want in the world?Read more at location 4059 • Delete this highlight
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“I’m jealous of anyone in love. Even more jealous of anyone loved back.”Read more at location 4067 • Delete this highlight
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you still dream of meeting someone who’s fallen in love with you for something you’ve written or painted, something you’ve created.Read more at location 4075 • Delete this highlight
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“It’s revolutionized my art!” Then, conspiratorially, “We could always arrange his drowning. The crocs know their business.”Read more at location 4089 • Delete this highlight
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“No holing up,” Parvati snapped. “We have opinions too.”Read more at location 4106 • Delete this highlight
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Theirs was a struggle—lost, in Baba’s case—against communalism and caste-ism and poverty and superstition and too much religion.Read more at location 4357 • Delete this highlight
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What a sad, pathetic thing it is, a man’s cry for what? Favors? Companionship? His private little prostitute?Read more at location 4368 • Delete this highlight
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unending dedication to duty, duty, duty. No mention of joy, fulfillment,Read more at location 4458 • Delete this highlight
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or happiness—it’s heroic.Read more at location 4459 • Delete this highlight
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The tears were for Peter, who still cared for his protégée, and for her father, who, in his clumsy way, had cared too much for the rebel daughter.Read more at location 4486 • Delete this highlight
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Let Citibank Srinivasan aim for nirvana; she was happy to be mired in maya.Read more at location 4506 • Delete this highlight
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“Who needs the mafia,” Auro joked, “when you’ve got an Indian extended family?”Read more at location 4518 • Delete this highlight
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The best I can come up with is you’re like a reflecting pool. You give back wavy clues to what we are or what we’re going to be.”Read more at location 4566 • Delete this highlight
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She had a sudden thought: Nothing bad can come of this. I’m down to one iron in the fire. Debt-recovery agent. If anything is to come of this night, or the future, she thought before turning in, I owe it to bats and crocodiles. How to explain the wonders of this world?Read more at location 4619 • Delete this highlight
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anything that teased out infinity.
And yet his influence hangs over some of us like the vault of heaven.
He went to villages and recorded long litanies of anecdotal history, family memories verging on fantasy, and, especially, local songs. (Note: What a rich life!)
The conventional form of Indian femininity projects itself through long-lashed, kohl-rimmed, startled black eyes. Modest women know to glance upward from a slightly bowed head. (Note: lol this is kinda true but also so 90s I don't think anyone in our generation knows how to do this Or maybe we all do an dare just waiting to take off our shells of modern hood?)
the dense clutter of handcarts and bicycles: swollen, restless India on the move.
But not like typical Indian students, those driven rote learners with one obsessive goal: admission to an Indian Institute of Technology.
Family weddings and funerals are the incontestable duties and rituals of Indian life.
Even at nineteen, Anjali was determined not to yield her right to happiness.
“What you wear, how you talk, no wonder! What good boy is going to look twice?”(Note: Oops who needed good boys anyway But omg this is so true)
"Why do you look at people's eyes" Whee am I suppose to look their feet!?
You’ll have kids and a husband who’s jealous of your intelligence and your English and won’t let you out of the house, and that would break my heart.”
Anjali was tuned in to her culture’s consolations for the denial of autonomy.
pleasure? How can you move ahead when all your energy is spent looking over your shoulder? They would never make progress; they were
boys in white shirts with secure prospects in a moribund bureaucracy.
It was not the proper time for Anjali to bring up the known fact that sex determination is male-linked.
negotiation, a girl has a hundred ways of disappointing, then it’s tumble, tumble down a hole or worse, like Alice in Wonderland.
school grades too high (potentially showing too much personal ambition)
But she trusted the boy; he wouldn’t laugh at her.Read more at location
His tone was offhand, conversational, as though Claude Monet and his weird cathedral in a town in France were the subject of everyone’s light-hearted conversation.
but at that precise moment she was still suspended between here and there, between now and then, and Rabi snapped the picture. Years later, people would say that it made a beautiful composition, enigmatic, Mona Lisa–like.
and no one had ever spoken to her about the nature of truth or art, or assumed she cared or knew anything about it.
Truths were handed down from the beginning of time and they held true forever, not for one five-hundredth of a second.
he had learned a Russian word, Chekhovian, from something he’d said about the Indian social and political
She was luminous and mysterious, a synthetic bonbon of indeterminate age. Shaky was a master of light and shadow.
Peter Champion gulped them both down before tearing two sheets off a notebook he carried in his
she simply could not imagine carrying on civilized discourse with anyone from Asansol.
was like voluntarily entering a black hole, especially the black hole of central India called Madhya Pradesh,
could have sat anywhere took the aisle seat next to her and almost immediately put his hand over her breast, as though he owned it, as though it was something he’d bought along with his
no questions and requested no favors—posed, in fact, as a tourist on the model of an Indo-American
helper. If hell and all the citizens of damnation had an Indian address, it was here. If
The numb certitudes of her life: I have no family. The only money in my pocket comes from a man whose world is alien to mine and whom I’ll never see again. I have no job, no skills. School teaches little.Read more at location 1120 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
Five hundred and sixty more kilometers to go. Two thousand kilometers behind her.Read more at location 1127 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
She, so proud of her Hindi and English and even, if pushed, her Bangla, had been struck deaf and dumb.Read more at location 1134 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
Mechanical cranes controlled by a single man, not the long lines of women and children tipping their small bowls of concrete.Read more at location 1145 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
novel by a southern writer named Narayan, set in a village—Malgudi, the writer called it—probablyRead more at location 1155 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
So, who was responsible for something as roaringly capitalistic as Bangalore?Read more at location 1159 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
and through the crack-of-dawn mayhem caused by rural India assaulting the city.Read more at location 1173 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
Another MG Road. Peter Champion once said, “Every American town has its Main, Oak, and Elm, just like India has its Gandhi-Nehru-Shastri.”Read more at location 1228 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
A gaggle of voices floated down to her, tinkly voices of hyperconfident breakfasters, chattering in American English. Finally, a languageRead more at location 1248 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
with familiar cadences! SheRead more at location 1249 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
Suzie. “I don’t know why they let those guys into the States. University of Illinois used toRead more at location 1332 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
have some class. I keep hoping I get him—he won’t have the balls to call back again.” Mike started singing, “I get no kick from Champagne.” He had a surprising voice: deep, American. “Mukky Sharma lives in Champaign.” “Well, no wonder he’s crazy,” Angie said, “living in Champagne!”Read more at location 1333 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
Mickey?’ What he really wants to know is, what’s the weather like in Bangalore today? What’s playing at the Galaxy? Do we still hang out at Forum? What about Styx or Pub World?Read more at location 1344 • Delete this highlight
Note: Lol that mall! I've been there Edit
skimps on comforts and counts only the rupees in her pocketbook and not the dreams inside herRead more at location 1396 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
Let the story line of her life write itself! Like a typical Bollywood heroine—the eternal innocent, the trusting small-town girl placing herself at the mercy of a confident, benevolent older man—she climbed into the stranger’s car. She’d seen this movie a hundred times.Read more at location 1407 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
He’d taken off for Bangalore because making it here meant making it anywhere in the world.Read more at location 1460 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
“Those are things known only in Bangalore. We have the building codes for every city in the world. We have ecological surveys and subsoil analysesRead more at location 1471 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
So he inspects buildings that aren’t there, in cities he’s never been to.Read more at location 1478 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
His explanation was that the original builders and later occupiers had refused to believe—or perhaps had known only too well—that they would never see England again.Read more at location 1547 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
Anjali visualized the developers as vultures circling a dying cow. No room for sentimentality in this city, she realized.Read more at location 1572 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
A job is the key to happiness, she calculated. A job brings respect and power. Money brings transformation. Stagnation creates doubt and tyranny. Money transforms a girl from Gauripur into a woman from Bangalore.Read more at location 1601 • Delete this highlight
Note: Isn't this literally the neoliberal feminist idea, though? Edit
Everything seemed secondhand, even the air. Yet she sensed that every object had once held immense value. For some reason she was suddenly reminded of Peter Champion’s words: every note a symphony.Read more at location 1620 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
but he described himself as an iconoclast. “Break your feudal habit of revering masters and elders,”Read more at location 1803 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
You could run away from home, but not from the rituals of family.Read more at location 1858 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
suffered. She saw her parents still cowering and still recovering from the scars of colonialism and the dazzling new Bangalore as a city of total amnesia.Read more at location 2029 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
outsourcing. I wish the prosperity was rooted to something. I wish it built something beyond glass monuments. It seems as flimsy as a kite or a balloon. What comes drifting in with the winds might just as easily drift away.”Read more at location 2319 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
Right then and there Anjali fell in love with Mr. GG. He was soRead more at location 2348 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
But Mr. GG cut through Minnie’s veils of nonsensical nostalgia and poor Mr. Champion’s middle-aged missionary zeal, and he presented a future she longedRead more at location 2349 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
“That’s it. We’re soldiers in a social revolution.”Read more at location 2382 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
She’d grown up with chaos masquerading as coherence.Read more at location 2520 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
Bollywood has no use for India’s women, apart from ornamentation.Read more at location 2707 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
Bose, 1 Kew Gardens, as well as sign into the logbook; took her visitor’s badge out of the guard’s hand; and clippedRead more at location 2984 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
She suddenly wondered if Indians born and raised in America, Rabi Chatterjee, for instance, lost that ability to identify ethnicity just by looking at an Indian face.Read more at location 3050 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
“I am in love. With Bangalore.”Read more at location 3156 • Delete this highlight
Add a note
“Appearances can be deceiving,” he said, smiling. “I trust in only the durability of the virtual universe.”Read more at location 3178 • Delete this highlight
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Park. She was a woman with a phone and a glow from being in love with love.Read more at location 3197 • Delete this highlight
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and she realized she wasn’t safe at all.Read more at location 3213 • Delete this highlight
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Things move slowly, like glaciers, until they erupt like tsunamis.Read more at location 3224 • Delete this highlight
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it might as well be to a well-established man who saved me and performed favors and kindnesses. A well-connected man who would owe me. ARead more at location 3233 • Delete this highlight
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ghost women, spidery thin, fighting each other for access to the drivers, and she hated the price of being a woman, and India, and every man she’d ever known.Read more at location 3241 • Delete this highlight
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Maybe all the men in white shirts she passed on the streets had been doing the same thing aRead more at location 3269 • Delete this highlight
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far. She wanted him to keep talking, keep driving, keep lusting. She wanted to love even more than to be loved.Read more at location 3285 • Delete this highlight
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Could the teacher include a lesson in optimism enhancement?Read more at location 3325 • Delete this highlight
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The TV episodes depressed her.Read more at location 3363 • Delete this highlight
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dollars. Insofar as reality can be composedRead more at location 3388 • Delete this highlight
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of raw data, Anjali had created Rock City. The rest of her virtual life was inspiredRead more at location 3389 • Delete this highlight
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Her crime was that of constant, heedless wanting; wanting too much; wanting more of everything, especially happiness.Read more at location 3727 • Delete this highlight
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To a trust-fund Californian photographer who played at slumming, life in India might be all light and angle, but if you are an overreaching penniless Bihari, the light is murky, the angles knife sharp.Read more at location 3743 • Delete this highlight
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copies. I am just a copy. InRead more at location 3775 • Delete this highlight
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You think you’re moving forward, you think you’re beginning to figure things out, and it’s all a trap.Read more at location 3781 • Delete this highlight
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Her father dreaded—had dreaded—looking foolish.Read more at location 3832 • Delete this highlight
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and insisted that only his wife could cook rice perfectly. Read more at location 3993
Note: Ugh men why do patriarchal Edit
Their homes and their neighborhood would reflect the best of the West they’d grown rich in and the romanticized best of the country they’d abandoned as ambitious young men.Read more at location 4009 • Delete this highlight
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freshness before haggling over the price with a fishmonger. Curried Read more at location 4043
Note: She's still so guilty Edit
She’d never felt so comfortable with a boy. Why can’t we get what we most want in the world?Read more at location 4059 • Delete this highlight
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“I’m jealous of anyone in love. Even more jealous of anyone loved back.”Read more at location 4067 • Delete this highlight
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you still dream of meeting someone who’s fallen in love with you for something you’ve written or painted, something you’ve created.Read more at location 4075 • Delete this highlight
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“It’s revolutionized my art!” Then, conspiratorially, “We could always arrange his drowning. The crocs know their business.”Read more at location 4089 • Delete this highlight
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“No holing up,” Parvati snapped. “We have opinions too.”Read more at location 4106 • Delete this highlight
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Theirs was a struggle—lost, in Baba’s case—against communalism and caste-ism and poverty and superstition and too much religion.Read more at location 4357 • Delete this highlight
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What a sad, pathetic thing it is, a man’s cry for what? Favors? Companionship? His private little prostitute?Read more at location 4368 • Delete this highlight
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unending dedication to duty, duty, duty. No mention of joy, fulfillment,Read more at location 4458 • Delete this highlight
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or happiness—it’s heroic.Read more at location 4459 • Delete this highlight
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The tears were for Peter, who still cared for his protégée, and for her father, who, in his clumsy way, had cared too much for the rebel daughter.Read more at location 4486 • Delete this highlight
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Let Citibank Srinivasan aim for nirvana; she was happy to be mired in maya.Read more at location 4506 • Delete this highlight
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“Who needs the mafia,” Auro joked, “when you’ve got an Indian extended family?”Read more at location 4518 • Delete this highlight
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The best I can come up with is you’re like a reflecting pool. You give back wavy clues to what we are or what we’re going to be.”Read more at location 4566 • Delete this highlight
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She had a sudden thought: Nothing bad can come of this. I’m down to one iron in the fire. Debt-recovery agent. If anything is to come of this night, or the future, she thought before turning in, I owe it to bats and crocodiles. How to explain the wonders of this world?Read more at location 4619 • Delete this highlight
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March 6, 2013
I'm in a script club (like book club, but for the theater).
The script was not available for "Disconnect", a play about lives of call center employees so we read this book instead. I enjoyed most of the book. The ending is awkward and for me it was unsatisfying.
This is two books mashed together. One is the story of Anjali/Angie/Anjolie our fantastical Bollywood Cinderella. She is alternately confident and unable to cope, makes poor choices without knowing the consequences (like every young adult) and is connected beyond belief. She has bad luck, often the result of her own choices. From the simple act of being late for a job interview when she was told, "Don't be late" to a truly bizarre identity theft/international terrorism incident. Oh, no! I would smack my forehead or put the book down and walk away. It was not predictable and not formulaic.
This Anjali story alternates with an engaging documentary of modern India. The rich descriptions transported me. The swinging between fantastical fiction and factual storytelling was awkward at times. I often found myself re-reading pages to try to understand what was happening.
A few paragraphs or a few pages advance the plot and then lots of descriptions or editorializing, usually through the mouths of characters. At times I wished I could just fish out the storyline.
The book ends abruptly with the last chapters offering three endings and not relating them. Was the author unable to chose between the three and included all to let the reader decide? Hellllooo Editor, where were you?
**Spoiler***
We are left to decide if she enters the Debt Collection biz and hooks up with GG.
The book could have ended on this note.
But then she travels with the new gay couple, her Photographer friends, into the sunset. Are we to presume that she had vacation time or she waited for the call to come from Debt Collection Services? Near death experiences with an alligator? I do not understand what purpose Chapter 10 serves.
Then we are given an Epilogue.
She returns to her hometown to speak? You are not given a time reference. I thought it was years later, a successful Anjolie. But then we learn she is showing her 'adopted Mom' her home and it is 8 months later? We get the editorial/documentary feel again but it is NOT coming form Angali/Anjolie's mouth as I first thought (Again, a point I had to re-read to 'get'). It is the collective voice of her audience telling us the changes in her hometown. Then it switches to He, Peter, describing Anjali then, almost too quickly to catch we have She. The speaker is Anjali.
Cinderella in Bollywood but she doesn't get the fella...
The script was not available for "Disconnect", a play about lives of call center employees so we read this book instead. I enjoyed most of the book. The ending is awkward and for me it was unsatisfying.
This is two books mashed together. One is the story of Anjali/Angie/Anjolie our fantastical Bollywood Cinderella. She is alternately confident and unable to cope, makes poor choices without knowing the consequences (like every young adult) and is connected beyond belief. She has bad luck, often the result of her own choices. From the simple act of being late for a job interview when she was told, "Don't be late" to a truly bizarre identity theft/international terrorism incident. Oh, no! I would smack my forehead or put the book down and walk away. It was not predictable and not formulaic.
This Anjali story alternates with an engaging documentary of modern India. The rich descriptions transported me. The swinging between fantastical fiction and factual storytelling was awkward at times. I often found myself re-reading pages to try to understand what was happening.
A few paragraphs or a few pages advance the plot and then lots of descriptions or editorializing, usually through the mouths of characters. At times I wished I could just fish out the storyline.
The book ends abruptly with the last chapters offering three endings and not relating them. Was the author unable to chose between the three and included all to let the reader decide? Hellllooo Editor, where were you?
**Spoiler***
We are left to decide if she enters the Debt Collection biz and hooks up with GG.
The book could have ended on this note.
But then she travels with the new gay couple, her Photographer friends, into the sunset. Are we to presume that she had vacation time or she waited for the call to come from Debt Collection Services? Near death experiences with an alligator? I do not understand what purpose Chapter 10 serves.
Then we are given an Epilogue.
She returns to her hometown to speak? You are not given a time reference. I thought it was years later, a successful Anjolie. But then we learn she is showing her 'adopted Mom' her home and it is 8 months later? We get the editorial/documentary feel again but it is NOT coming form Angali/Anjolie's mouth as I first thought (Again, a point I had to re-read to 'get'). It is the collective voice of her audience telling us the changes in her hometown. Then it switches to He, Peter, describing Anjali then, almost too quickly to catch we have She. The speaker is Anjali.
Cinderella in Bollywood but she doesn't get the fella...
July 18, 2011
Miss New India is a novel whose intent seems clear – the dissolution of traditional India via a social revolution steeped in the “benefits” of materialism. It is the new India, a feminine universe, whoring herself out to the westernized world; namely the USA. In this regard, India is young and naive, like the protagonist, Anjali. India has not yet matured from her experience. It is adolescent growth in progress - the outcome yet unknown. Like Anjali, it is still being invented. India’s purpose is innocent – ambition – to better the quality of life. The problem, as in every society, is how to grow without losing one’s identity. The young are quick to throw away the old ways, while the older generations tenaciously hang on to them. Somewhere in between there lies the threat of violence.
When the above is taken into consideration, the author’s sense of purpose and integrity is admirable. However, as I read Miss New India, I felt impatient. Poems seemed dropped in haphazardly, as if forced intellectualization. The plot was over-loaded and void of passion, an innate component of any social change. Despite everything that occurred throughout the novel, it lacked impact. As much as I wanted to embrace this book, it drowned in its insipid characterization of an empowered female and was laden with overwrought details. The foundation was well prepared; the story-line fell short of its goal.
When the above is taken into consideration, the author’s sense of purpose and integrity is admirable. However, as I read Miss New India, I felt impatient. Poems seemed dropped in haphazardly, as if forced intellectualization. The plot was over-loaded and void of passion, an innate component of any social change. Despite everything that occurred throughout the novel, it lacked impact. As much as I wanted to embrace this book, it drowned in its insipid characterization of an empowered female and was laden with overwrought details. The foundation was well prepared; the story-line fell short of its goal.
November 29, 2020
As engaging as any callow youth you'd care to recall, Ms. Mukherjee's Bildungsroman gives us Anjali Bose. Her story lands on the shelf smoothly written and replete with Indian society.
When I was a young man I worked with people from all over the world. By coincidence or nature, those from India were more apt to speak of their backgrounds and native country than people hailing from the rest of Asia or the Near East or Europe. One thing I heard several times is that India has one third the land area of the U.S. and three times its population. That perspective weighs well when reading novels set there, whether the present volume or the older "Shantaram", a grittier look at the subcontinent.
Anjali will not necessarily win the hearts of all readers. She is a bit self-centered and incredibly naive. But as they come from the small towns into the cities, girls from India and around the world are similar in these aspects. Boys,too, are subject to foolishness as they try to emerge from adolescence, but are less apt to become commercial items in a cruel world. Mukherjee manages to generate suspense and culminate bad situations with humor.
Recommended.
When I was a young man I worked with people from all over the world. By coincidence or nature, those from India were more apt to speak of their backgrounds and native country than people hailing from the rest of Asia or the Near East or Europe. One thing I heard several times is that India has one third the land area of the U.S. and three times its population. That perspective weighs well when reading novels set there, whether the present volume or the older "Shantaram", a grittier look at the subcontinent.
Anjali will not necessarily win the hearts of all readers. She is a bit self-centered and incredibly naive. But as they come from the small towns into the cities, girls from India and around the world are similar in these aspects. Boys,too, are subject to foolishness as they try to emerge from adolescence, but are less apt to become commercial items in a cruel world. Mukherjee manages to generate suspense and culminate bad situations with humor.
Recommended.
June 25, 2011
I enjoyed this book a lot more than I thought I would - yes, the characters have no emotional depth, BUT the plot moves along so quickly that I couldn't put it down. It is the (fictional) story of a young Indian woman who leaves her backwater town to escape an arranged marriage and ends up in Bangalore trying to get a job at a call center. As one of the Americans on the other end of the phone line I found this part to be the most interesting in the book. The training these people receive: practicing various American accents (by watching Sex and the City and the Sopranos), memorizing time zone and state codes, keeping up to date with American sporting events, how do deflect games that American callers play called 'root out the Indian' - was fascinating! I also really appreciated the novelty of the setting. I've read books about India before, but they were all set during the British rule and this one was set in the present day. I believe the author to be completely correct in saying that 'India is on fire' - and we'd all do well to pay more attention to it.
March 15, 2012
Interesting story of the emerging women of India,although not very likeable, Anjali Bose is the author's view of the new Miss India. Angie has been brought up to expect a successful arranged marriage, despite her sister's disastrous example. Growing up in a small town, she nevertheless catches the interest of an expat teacher who sees potential in her. From the description, I just see a spoiled brat who expects Prince Charming, selected by her father, to sweep her off her feet to riches and glory. When her expectations are dashed, she runs away to Bangalore, with letters of recommendation and opportunities galore. She is awash in self pity which I found extremely annoying, and she is dishonest with herself and even those who try to help her. This may be the face of the emerging Miss India, but it is certainly not a pleasant or complimentary depiction of a new generation. Eager to lie on the phone to Americans, and lie to each other about who they are, the characters have little integrity and are mostly examples of greed, self pity and dishonesty.
July 10, 2011
The story of Anjali Bose, a young woman escaping her backwater town and the future her parents plan for her, Miss New India has a lot to say about the new economy of India and the impact it's having on society, as she moves to Bangalore in search of a brighter future. It was an absorbing, engaging read, but Anjali is so naive that it's hard to understand why her American teacher, and subsequent potential mentors, see her as potentially extraordinary. Because the third-person narrative is very much from Anjali's perspective, the readers is constantly seeing things that she doesn't, and after awhile, that leads to some serious eyerolling. Nonetheless, the picture of contemporary Bangalore is vivid, and the scenes set in Bagehot House, where Anjali boards with an old Anglo-Indian lady who lives very much in her memories of the BritishRaj, are especially visual.
September 24, 2011
I've wondered about those who answer phone calls in Indian service centers. How do they do it? This is the story of a young woman who leaves her family to escape an awful arranged marriage and goes to Bangalore at her English teacher's suggestion. He helps her with letters of introduction and a new life begins. Some scenes are tough and upsetting but vivid and believable. The author's ability to convey the thoughts of Anjolie as she struggles to appear mature and succeed in a difficult situation are admirable. I found myself recalling how I felt at age 19, 20 as I had not for years. The story is fast paced and readable. At least one set of characters from THE MEAGRE TARMAC by Clark Blaise appears minimally, so I wondered if they were based on people whom the talented writing couple knows.
November 1, 2011
In this book Miss New India author basically takes you on the trip through the life of a19yr old girl. The book is fun because the main character Anjali is pretty charismatic playful and very descriptive - kinda takes you there. The story starts of as the typical scenario, Anjali who is about to be married of to the perfect boy but she wants more out of her life then to be housewife in some remote town. As the pressure from continues, she find a friend and support in a professor, who motivates her to run away and free herself her from the pressure. Anjali runs away to Bangalore and starts her new life.
March 14, 2017
Picked this up after bookclub as one of the "If you liked ___ book, you might like this" suggestions, with the blank in that case being "Brick Lane" by "Monica Ali.
Back cover sounded enticing, I had great hopes, and then I abandoned it early on because I just could not deal with the rampant and casual sexual molestation. I do not question whether the author is portraying harsh reality or not (news out of the subcontinent over the past years makes in only too clear that this was not exagerrated). I just didn't want to have to live in that particular harsh reality for the duration of the story.
Back cover sounded enticing, I had great hopes, and then I abandoned it early on because I just could not deal with the rampant and casual sexual molestation. I do not question whether the author is portraying harsh reality or not (news out of the subcontinent over the past years makes in only too clear that this was not exagerrated). I just didn't want to have to live in that particular harsh reality for the duration of the story.
June 19, 2013
I originally picked up this book to read because my daughter was about to embark on a month-long trip through India and I thought it help me learn a bit about the country and its culture. It didn't disappoint! This book was a great read - likeable characters, vivid descriptions, and gives the reader a look at the part of India where changes are either happening,or at least the hope of change is happening.
October 6, 2020
Out of all of the Three Sisters from Calcutta books I've had to read for class, Miss New India is my favorite. There are many themes in this book, but one that sticks out to me is the idea of a new up and coming generation. This generation is one that readers my age can relate more to; there are technological and economic changes as well as the ideas of sexuality and cultural change. This book felt more real to me.
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