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Family Planning
Rakesh Ahuja, a Government Minister in New Delhi, is beset by problems: thirteen children and another on the way; a wife who mourns the loss of her favorite TV star; and a teenaged son with some really strong opinions about family planning.
To make matters worse, looming over this comical farrago are secrets - both personal and political - that threaten to push the Ahuja household into disastrous turmoil. Following father and son as they blunder their way across the troubled landscape of New Delhi, Karen Mahajan brilliantly captures the frenetic pace of India's capital city to create a searing portrait of modern family life.
To make matters worse, looming over this comical farrago are secrets - both personal and political - that threaten to push the Ahuja household into disastrous turmoil. Following father and son as they blunder their way across the troubled landscape of New Delhi, Karen Mahajan brilliantly captures the frenetic pace of India's capital city to create a searing portrait of modern family life.
264 pages, Paperback
First published November 5, 2008
23 people are currently reading
800 people want to read
About the author
Karan Mahajan
6 books334 followersKaran Mahajan is the author of "The Association of Small Bombs," which was a finalist for the National Book Award, winner of the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award, and was named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by the New York Times Book Review. His debut novel "Family Planning" was a finalist for the International Dylan Thomas Prize. He has been selected as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists, and his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The New York Review of Books, and other venues. He is an associate professor in Literary Arts at Brown University. His third novel, "The Complex," is forthcoming in March 2026.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 72 reviews
October 7, 2016
When you read Mahajan, you feel other people's feelings; you live in other lands and you are fully entertained. I found myself laughing on one page but aching with compassion on the next. His writing is exquisite.
Although the social and cultural references will not be familiar immediately, the writing is so good that as you continue reading, you absorb the meaning of the references just as you would were you actually having the experience.
Although the social and cultural references will not be familiar immediately, the writing is so good that as you continue reading, you absorb the meaning of the references just as you would were you actually having the experience.
July 9, 2010
This book had all the right elements but something just didn't work for me. I read the whole thing thinking "this is perfectly absurd, I should be laughing" but instead I just kept dozing off.
December 5, 2008
What a spectacular book from a debut article. A seemingly simple subject on a family and its head in a few days is woven into a complex plot that is handled brilliantly, with a wickedly comic streak that keeps the reader entertained..and the human element of father son, husband wife and professional life, adolescent crush and a chaotic Indian city, all dealt with remarkable prose and dexterity.
A must read for all walks of life, for its hilarious and brilliant portrayal of modern day India.
A must read for all walks of life, for its hilarious and brilliant portrayal of modern day India.
November 11, 2017
If you want to pick up a Karan Mahajan book, then please read The Association of Small Bombs . After being very impressed by his second book I chose to read his first and it wasn't a good choice. As I struggled to get through this book I still don't know what this book is about . Meh
February 13, 2023
I feel like nothing really happened…??
April 7, 2018
The teenage boy who is in the privileged position of not yet belonging to the adult world is able to see in a sharply precise manner all sorts of things that are wrong with it. Unfortunately, in his own drive for gratification, the son becomes just as callous as his father.
If the father uses the memory of his dead first wife (with whom he had a love marriage - a concept explored as the opposite of the arranged marriage) in order to justify his uncaring behavior towards his second wife, the son then uses the revelation about his dead mother in order to impress a girl he claims to be in love with, but about which he only thinks in objectifying terms.
A sad story, but the social and political landscape of contemporary India is also revealed beautifully throughout the details that add meat on the main narrative's bones. I also liked the author's humor and matter-of-factly manner; nothing which I thought sad is not underlined as sad in the book. The drama is kept to a minimum, everything is written as if comical, and you can only read the drama throughout the lines. This makes it great style, in my opinion.
Also, as part of my self-imposed project of getting more familiar with contemporary Indian literature (and especially socially relevant literature), this turned out to be a great choice.
If the father uses the memory of his dead first wife (with whom he had a love marriage - a concept explored as the opposite of the arranged marriage) in order to justify his uncaring behavior towards his second wife, the son then uses the revelation about his dead mother in order to impress a girl he claims to be in love with, but about which he only thinks in objectifying terms.
A sad story, but the social and political landscape of contemporary India is also revealed beautifully throughout the details that add meat on the main narrative's bones. I also liked the author's humor and matter-of-factly manner; nothing which I thought sad is not underlined as sad in the book. The drama is kept to a minimum, everything is written as if comical, and you can only read the drama throughout the lines. This makes it great style, in my opinion.
Also, as part of my self-imposed project of getting more familiar with contemporary Indian literature (and especially socially relevant literature), this turned out to be a great choice.
May 18, 2017
I read this because I thought Mahajan's later book (The Association of Small Bombs) was so well written. This book attempts humor amid chaos. It succeeds at times, but there are lapses. The Delhi politics remained obtuse for me; I struggled to understand what was going on. The Sagrita character (the main character's long-suffering and always pregnant) wife is undeveloped, more cartoon than anything else. What does succeed is a picture of a city in turmoil: building half-done and abandoned, humans, animals, noise, pollution, corruption. The conceit of a man with 13 (!) children, and another on the way, is clever, and the descriptions of meal-times and exits for school are very funny. For a first novel, it's a good attempt, but it still is a raw talent. Is this a sly attempt to comment on India's population explosion? Don't know.
December 16, 2008
This is a wild romp of a book about a family of thirteen (going on fourteen) in New Delhi, India. The pov shifts between the oldest kid, a sixteen year old boy, his dad, a pregnant woman loving politician, and the poor, poor wife/mom. The author does a really wonderful job of folding in past story, and running the plot into complications, and depicting the interactions of teenage boys. A very fun read, by a very nice guy-- a new friend in the neighborhood.
May 19, 2016
A funny and quirky debut novel that follows the life of an Indian politician named Rakush, his eldest son Anjur, and the rest of his enormous family. The narrative jumps back and forth between Rakush and Anjur as they both are going through trying times in their lives. I'm nowhere near an expert on Indian culture or politics, but from what little I've heard, this seems like a fairly spot on send up of both.
May 6, 2015
A fast, breezy, comic read. The writer has a clever voice that was a lot of fun to spend a day with. He was really young when he wrote this, and the understanding of relationships is definitely emotionally immature. The female characters are particularly cartoonish. But the book does uproar and caper exceedingly well.
September 18, 2010
I read this because it was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2010.
It stared out good - interesting characters, chaotic family and city setting, but it kind of wore out for me. I have a feeling it would be much funnier to people who had lived or live in New Delhi.
It stared out good - interesting characters, chaotic family and city setting, but it kind of wore out for me. I have a feeling it would be much funnier to people who had lived or live in New Delhi.
July 5, 2016
This is a great comic novel about an Indian politician in Delhi, his teenage son and his very large and growing family. It's very entertaining and Mahajan is an author I'll read again, but he doesn't so much bring his story to closure as just bring it to a stop.
November 28, 2016
Pathetic!! Its funny at times but it's just a waste of my time.
April 9, 2019
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a 16-year old with a crush on a girl on the school bus, must be in want of a less embarrassing family.
In the case of Arjun, his family is so personally embarrassing to him that not even his best friends know that in addition to the 6 siblings he admits to (the ones he can’t deny since they go to his school) there are another 6 at home. As if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, his mother’s about to add another to the collection. Arjun’s father Rakesh Ahuja is a politician – the Minister for Urban Development – and he has two great passions; his lust for pregnant women which leads him to keep his wife almost permanently in a state of pregnancy and lactation and his determination to improve the city infrastructure for which he is responsible by building lots of flyovers.
At 16 years of age, nobody wants to be confronted with evidence of parental sexual activity, so when Arjun walks in on his parents ‘at it’ on the floor of the nursery, he’s forced to readdress his teen perceptions about his parents. Like most young people (though perhaps at a rather later age) he’s comfortable that the parental sexual equation should run something like: number of children = number of sexual encounters. Or in this case = number of sexual encounters minus one since two of the children are twins. The discovery of just how wrong he is, comes at a time when the son is himself feeling the teen stirrings of lust for the girl on the school bus is rather unbalancing for both father and son. Arjun’s enjoyment of American media has led him to believe that sex is “the spontaneous transfer of fluid between very attractive, naked, blond people” and finding two old unattractive brown people on the floor of the nursery has shattered his illusions. In case you are thinking ‘Sixteen? That’s a bit old to be discovering such things’ I should mention that the book is set in Delhi, India’s capital city where such things are a little less in your face and ‘nice’ young people are less sexually ‘aware’ than their European peers.
Arjun’s father Rakesh is torn between sorting out his problems at home and writing up his 63rd resignation email which he assumes will not be accepted by his egotistical and power-crazed lady boss. Arjun is Rakesh’s son by his first wife, a beautiful intelligent woman who was the great love of his life but was tragically killed when Arjun was a toddler. However, none of the children know about this and Rakesh realises it’s time to come clean but he’s not sure quite how to burst his son’s bubble. When Rakesh married his second wife, her mother swapped her (the plain, chubby, less educated one) for the gorgeous, curvy beauty he had agreed to marry and only his own silly pride prevented him from saying anything at the wedding. Tragically he doesn’t really love or respect the woman he married but he’s in much too deep to do anything about it. He may tell people that’s he’s on a one man mission to repopulate India, but in truth he only fancies his wife when she’s pregnant.
Twelve children later and pregnant with Rakesh’s 14th child, the wife Sangita is hormonal and hysterical over the death of her favourite soap star (only on the soap, you understand, not in real life) after he dropped his ‘cell-o-phone’ in the bath. Young Arjun is trying to form a band called ‘Flyovers Yaar’ with a view to serenading his lady love with some of Brian Adams’s finest compositions. The band is big on enthusiasm and exceptionally limited on talent.
Can Rakesh find a nice way to tell his children about his hidden past? Can a national strike by the fans of the dead soap star be averted? Will Arjun’s band ever get to perform and win the hand of the fair lady? And what would happen if THIS time the boss accepts Rakesh’s resignation? You can be pretty sure on all points that whatever does happen will be funny.
I have struggled with contemporary Indian humour in fiction. I’m not 100% sure how to classify this but it’s not ‘literary’ fiction (which I adore – the Indian writers excel at serious writing) and not an all out belly-busting laugh a minute comedy. It’s more a wry observational style of human-centred humour than any kind of knock-about.
A lot of modern Indian novels only work if you know the setting. Since Delhi is a city I know pretty well, I generally have strong mental images when reading any book set there and I suspect I get more out of those books than people who don’t know the location. During the same week that I read Family Planning, I devoured Khushwant Singh’s classic ‘Delhi: A Novel’ and I know that if I hadn’t been familiar with the city it just wouldn’t have meant much to me. However, in the case of Family Planning, I don’t think you need to know the city or the ways of life to get a good giggle out of the family traumas of the Ahujas. The city may play a large part in the events, but in reality, they could be almost anywhere and still the book would be just as funny and moving. However if you do know a little bit about Indian lifestyles and behaviour, you will get a bit more out of the book if only for being able to recognise the uncomfortable truths hidden in some of the passages.
Karan Mahajan
The author is a good looking and ridiculously young man who was born in the USA but brought up in Delhi and then headed back to the USA to graduate from Stanford University. I’m jealous! He wasn’t even born until 1984 and already he’s got a cracking good first novel on the market and his book is carrying cover endorsements by the likes of the great and ever-trendy Jay McInerney and fantastic Indian writer Manil Suri (author of ‘The Death of Vishnu‘ and the even better ‘Age of Shiva‘). I couldn’t help but wonder how many brothers and sisters Mahajan has and whether his life-history was closely aligned with that of his young hero but in reality, it doesn’t matter if this is fact or fiction, autobiography or sheer fantasy because the Ahuja family ‘become’ real on the pages of this book. Despite the absurdity of the characters and their extreme ways, I found that I cared about almost every one of them with the possible exception of the girl on the bus.
I wanted to hate Mahajan for his early success and to find lots of the normal idiocies that fill such first novels but I couldn’t help myself, I loved it. Almost every page gave me passages that made me laugh out loud and tempted me to bore my husband silly by reading bits out to him. Luckily for him I was on a tour bus surrounded by other people whilst I was reading this book and that probably helped to keep me quiet.
In the case of Arjun, his family is so personally embarrassing to him that not even his best friends know that in addition to the 6 siblings he admits to (the ones he can’t deny since they go to his school) there are another 6 at home. As if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, his mother’s about to add another to the collection. Arjun’s father Rakesh Ahuja is a politician – the Minister for Urban Development – and he has two great passions; his lust for pregnant women which leads him to keep his wife almost permanently in a state of pregnancy and lactation and his determination to improve the city infrastructure for which he is responsible by building lots of flyovers.
At 16 years of age, nobody wants to be confronted with evidence of parental sexual activity, so when Arjun walks in on his parents ‘at it’ on the floor of the nursery, he’s forced to readdress his teen perceptions about his parents. Like most young people (though perhaps at a rather later age) he’s comfortable that the parental sexual equation should run something like: number of children = number of sexual encounters. Or in this case = number of sexual encounters minus one since two of the children are twins. The discovery of just how wrong he is, comes at a time when the son is himself feeling the teen stirrings of lust for the girl on the school bus is rather unbalancing for both father and son. Arjun’s enjoyment of American media has led him to believe that sex is “the spontaneous transfer of fluid between very attractive, naked, blond people” and finding two old unattractive brown people on the floor of the nursery has shattered his illusions. In case you are thinking ‘Sixteen? That’s a bit old to be discovering such things’ I should mention that the book is set in Delhi, India’s capital city where such things are a little less in your face and ‘nice’ young people are less sexually ‘aware’ than their European peers.
Arjun’s father Rakesh is torn between sorting out his problems at home and writing up his 63rd resignation email which he assumes will not be accepted by his egotistical and power-crazed lady boss. Arjun is Rakesh’s son by his first wife, a beautiful intelligent woman who was the great love of his life but was tragically killed when Arjun was a toddler. However, none of the children know about this and Rakesh realises it’s time to come clean but he’s not sure quite how to burst his son’s bubble. When Rakesh married his second wife, her mother swapped her (the plain, chubby, less educated one) for the gorgeous, curvy beauty he had agreed to marry and only his own silly pride prevented him from saying anything at the wedding. Tragically he doesn’t really love or respect the woman he married but he’s in much too deep to do anything about it. He may tell people that’s he’s on a one man mission to repopulate India, but in truth he only fancies his wife when she’s pregnant.
Twelve children later and pregnant with Rakesh’s 14th child, the wife Sangita is hormonal and hysterical over the death of her favourite soap star (only on the soap, you understand, not in real life) after he dropped his ‘cell-o-phone’ in the bath. Young Arjun is trying to form a band called ‘Flyovers Yaar’ with a view to serenading his lady love with some of Brian Adams’s finest compositions. The band is big on enthusiasm and exceptionally limited on talent.
Can Rakesh find a nice way to tell his children about his hidden past? Can a national strike by the fans of the dead soap star be averted? Will Arjun’s band ever get to perform and win the hand of the fair lady? And what would happen if THIS time the boss accepts Rakesh’s resignation? You can be pretty sure on all points that whatever does happen will be funny.
I have struggled with contemporary Indian humour in fiction. I’m not 100% sure how to classify this but it’s not ‘literary’ fiction (which I adore – the Indian writers excel at serious writing) and not an all out belly-busting laugh a minute comedy. It’s more a wry observational style of human-centred humour than any kind of knock-about.
A lot of modern Indian novels only work if you know the setting. Since Delhi is a city I know pretty well, I generally have strong mental images when reading any book set there and I suspect I get more out of those books than people who don’t know the location. During the same week that I read Family Planning, I devoured Khushwant Singh’s classic ‘Delhi: A Novel’ and I know that if I hadn’t been familiar with the city it just wouldn’t have meant much to me. However, in the case of Family Planning, I don’t think you need to know the city or the ways of life to get a good giggle out of the family traumas of the Ahujas. The city may play a large part in the events, but in reality, they could be almost anywhere and still the book would be just as funny and moving. However if you do know a little bit about Indian lifestyles and behaviour, you will get a bit more out of the book if only for being able to recognise the uncomfortable truths hidden in some of the passages.
Karan Mahajan
The author is a good looking and ridiculously young man who was born in the USA but brought up in Delhi and then headed back to the USA to graduate from Stanford University. I’m jealous! He wasn’t even born until 1984 and already he’s got a cracking good first novel on the market and his book is carrying cover endorsements by the likes of the great and ever-trendy Jay McInerney and fantastic Indian writer Manil Suri (author of ‘The Death of Vishnu‘ and the even better ‘Age of Shiva‘). I couldn’t help but wonder how many brothers and sisters Mahajan has and whether his life-history was closely aligned with that of his young hero but in reality, it doesn’t matter if this is fact or fiction, autobiography or sheer fantasy because the Ahuja family ‘become’ real on the pages of this book. Despite the absurdity of the characters and their extreme ways, I found that I cared about almost every one of them with the possible exception of the girl on the bus.
I wanted to hate Mahajan for his early success and to find lots of the normal idiocies that fill such first novels but I couldn’t help myself, I loved it. Almost every page gave me passages that made me laugh out loud and tempted me to bore my husband silly by reading bits out to him. Luckily for him I was on a tour bus surrounded by other people whilst I was reading this book and that probably helped to keep me quiet.
March 9, 2020
Like, it seems, almost every other review written by people who read The Association of Small Bombs before this, I have to begin by stating my disappointment. Karan Mahajan's second book is fantastic. This one, not so much. Making it even more disappointing is that the premise has promise, but the book never lives up to what it could have been.
My biggest concern has to do with pacing. Not that the book ever gets too slow or bogged down under itself, but at almost every turn, I can feel Mahajan purposefully withholding information. I understand that authors do this; it's how you control pace and plot complications, but as a reader, I don't usually feel the writer doing it. Mahajan's presence in these moments definitely makes this withholding feel artificial and not organic.
It was funny at times, but not often enough to cover up its deeper flaws.
My biggest concern has to do with pacing. Not that the book ever gets too slow or bogged down under itself, but at almost every turn, I can feel Mahajan purposefully withholding information. I understand that authors do this; it's how you control pace and plot complications, but as a reader, I don't usually feel the writer doing it. Mahajan's presence in these moments definitely makes this withholding feel artificial and not organic.
It was funny at times, but not often enough to cover up its deeper flaws.
January 26, 2021
Week 4 Book 6
Family Planning by Karan Mahajan
Rating: 2/5
I heard this audiobook on Audible. This book has mixed reviews and throughout my listening, I kept yo-yoing between 'funny book' to 'wth'. I think I've settled down to 'meh' in the end.
FP revolves around a cabinet minister in Delhi called Mr Ahuja whose claim to fame apart from his work on flyovers, is his ever increasing family, which already had 14 children and 1 on the way. It also discusses his relationship with his very ordinary and perpetually pregnant wife Sangeeta, and his oldest child, a moody teenager called Arjun.
Set in the early 2000s it touches upon the telecom revolution, the rapid expansion of the city, lots of politics both at home and at work, and yearning in love, of different kinds. The characters and plotline had good scope for humour but somehow fizzled out for me. Another let down was choosing an English Indian actor for the narration, whose weird accent didn't do justice to the novel and only took away from it. Maybe if I had read it I'd have rated it better. Or maybe I'd have abandoned it altogether. Bottomline: it's avoidable.
Family Planning by Karan Mahajan
Rating: 2/5
I heard this audiobook on Audible. This book has mixed reviews and throughout my listening, I kept yo-yoing between 'funny book' to 'wth'. I think I've settled down to 'meh' in the end.
FP revolves around a cabinet minister in Delhi called Mr Ahuja whose claim to fame apart from his work on flyovers, is his ever increasing family, which already had 14 children and 1 on the way. It also discusses his relationship with his very ordinary and perpetually pregnant wife Sangeeta, and his oldest child, a moody teenager called Arjun.
Set in the early 2000s it touches upon the telecom revolution, the rapid expansion of the city, lots of politics both at home and at work, and yearning in love, of different kinds. The characters and plotline had good scope for humour but somehow fizzled out for me. Another let down was choosing an English Indian actor for the narration, whose weird accent didn't do justice to the novel and only took away from it. Maybe if I had read it I'd have rated it better. Or maybe I'd have abandoned it altogether. Bottomline: it's avoidable.
March 1, 2021
I enjoyed this book because it made me laugh, which is not so usual for me when I'm reading fiction. Every aspect of this crazy/corrupt/well-intentioned civil servant's life was out of whack, with particular emphasis on the fact that he keeps new babies popping out of his wife due to his fetish for making love to her while she's pregnant. A lot of the POV is from the eldest son, whose life story contains vital facts that he doesn't know. I particularly enjoyed the author's descriptions of Delhi as a live breathing mess of a polluted overcrowded city, because I found them funny too. I have to warn that others in my book group did not like this book as much as I did, and that none of the characters are particularly attractive if you take their descriptions seriously. But for me it was a light amusing read, though the ending was abrupt and not satisfying.
November 11, 2020
This book made me laugh a lot. The use of language was great; descriptions were excellent, and a touch of genius was evident throughout the whole book. I was enjoying the ride until when it suddenly ended! What happened to the girl, what happened to the father, what happened to the family? What did I just read? In the end, all the little plotlines remained unfinished while the underlying story was wrapped up and disposed of too quickly. It felt as if he ran out of paper or something. A sad way to waste such an interesting idea and a great ability to write!
June 18, 2024
A solid 3. Entertaining, but like all novels with rotating narrators, I was impatient with those I found annoying (Arjun) and intrigued by those with richer, though sometimes absurd, thoughts to share (Rakesh, Sangita). Things felt very rushed toward the end and I was expecting a much stronger finale. But it was a quick and interesting read, particularly while pregnant myself.
July 24, 2017
Refreshingly frank. Funny what may be perceived as unintentional ways.
May 23, 2019
Took me a while to finish this book. I felt like there was a lack of flow. Not my favourite writing style !
July 21, 2024
A minister in Delhi, having a dozen children, living in a sprawling government house. Attempted at hilarious situations but turns out an average read.
January 9, 2011
Humorous domestic debut novel with serious themes of sexual dysfunction, desires, family dynamics and Indian society in a plot focusing on the personal dramas of a father and eldest son in an unusually large family, alternating chapters switch from the point of view of the father to the son. I liked the humor and found the teenage son to be a more sympathetic character than the well-meaning but inept father.
Father and son are both well developed characters but the Mother appears as a "large empty-headed woman who sees the characters on her favorite soap opera as her true family." Definitely not a feminist viewpoint.
Also included in the back of this edition is a PS section with an interview about the author which includes a list of Indian authors who Mahajan found inspirational including R.K. Narayan, Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie, G.V. Desani, Khushwant Singh, V.S. Naipaul, Kiran Nagarkar, Anita Desai, Arundhati Roy and Vikram Chandra.
The two books that most influenced him while writing Family Planning were R.K. Narayan's Bachelor of Arts and Salman Rushdie's East, West.
Two novels by Indian writers Mahajan thinks ought to be published in the US ASAP (and which sound great) are The mammaries of the welfare state by Upamanyu Chatterjee and Ravan & Eddie by Kiran Nagarkar. Both are available at a few University libraries in the US.
Father and son are both well developed characters but the Mother appears as a "large empty-headed woman who sees the characters on her favorite soap opera as her true family." Definitely not a feminist viewpoint.
Also included in the back of this edition is a PS section with an interview about the author which includes a list of Indian authors who Mahajan found inspirational including R.K. Narayan, Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie, G.V. Desani, Khushwant Singh, V.S. Naipaul, Kiran Nagarkar, Anita Desai, Arundhati Roy and Vikram Chandra.
The two books that most influenced him while writing Family Planning were R.K. Narayan's Bachelor of Arts and Salman Rushdie's East, West.
Two novels by Indian writers Mahajan thinks ought to be published in the US ASAP (and which sound great) are The mammaries of the welfare state by Upamanyu Chatterjee and Ravan & Eddie by Kiran Nagarkar. Both are available at a few University libraries in the US.
December 1, 2016
The book is about the Ahuja family, situated in New Delhi, India. It runs through the life of three main characters and features only their POV’s. The father, Rakesh Ahuja, is the Minister of Urban Development and has over 13 kids with his wife. The mother, Sangita Ahuja is the perpetually pregnant, tv-obssessed, placid wife. And the oldest son, Arjun Ahuja is a 16 year old with a lot of feelings. Simply put, the book captures a slice of their normal life, between some monumental moments.
From the summaries, it’s pretty evidential that there isn’t anything sort of ground-breaking in the story. I mean, you could totally imagine some boy lying to impress a girl. A father trying to keep it together/ failing and saying the wrong words instead. Or even a tv-obsessed mother who bottles things up and never mentions how she feels. The three are stories that are easily imaginable and seem quite typical. But I think that’s actually where the ingenuity of the book lies. Despite its seemingly simplistic content, it actually provides a really interesting look into the psyche of India and it’s citizens and highlights the contradictions that make it up.
Diverging from the deeper analysis, technically speaking, the book is also written in an alright manner. The writing is simple and easy enough to read. That said, I actually didn’t find the book to be as comical as other writers did. I read a few reviews online and a lot of people stated that they found specific lines in the book funny. Unfortunately, I don’t feel the same. I think the book is funny in its satire and ironical content, but I didn’t find specific words or phrases funny. I don’t know, maybe I have a different sense of humour but I found a few of the jokes to be more gross than funny. However, I think its still important to point out, that this doesn’t mean that the book was bad. As far as things go, the book was decent. Not laugh-out-funny, but still light-hearted and enjoyable.
***rest of the review at https://guptasaab.wordpress.com/
From the summaries, it’s pretty evidential that there isn’t anything sort of ground-breaking in the story. I mean, you could totally imagine some boy lying to impress a girl. A father trying to keep it together/ failing and saying the wrong words instead. Or even a tv-obsessed mother who bottles things up and never mentions how she feels. The three are stories that are easily imaginable and seem quite typical. But I think that’s actually where the ingenuity of the book lies. Despite its seemingly simplistic content, it actually provides a really interesting look into the psyche of India and it’s citizens and highlights the contradictions that make it up.
Diverging from the deeper analysis, technically speaking, the book is also written in an alright manner. The writing is simple and easy enough to read. That said, I actually didn’t find the book to be as comical as other writers did. I read a few reviews online and a lot of people stated that they found specific lines in the book funny. Unfortunately, I don’t feel the same. I think the book is funny in its satire and ironical content, but I didn’t find specific words or phrases funny. I don’t know, maybe I have a different sense of humour but I found a few of the jokes to be more gross than funny. However, I think its still important to point out, that this doesn’t mean that the book was bad. As far as things go, the book was decent. Not laugh-out-funny, but still light-hearted and enjoyable.
***rest of the review at https://guptasaab.wordpress.com/
July 15, 2016
I received this book for free from the publisher. All content and opinions are my own.
Rakesh Ahuja has thirteen children (with one on the way) and a wife whom he is attracted to only when she is pregnant. He is the Minister of Urban Development in the Indian government, but his personal and political clashes are taking their toll. In particular, he's dealing with his immature and moody oldest son, Arjun, and a political coup started by the (on-screen) death of the country's most famous soap star.
I have to say that I just didn't "get" this book. Many of the other reviews characterize it as amusing or farcical. I failed to see the comedy in most of it. I didn't understand many of the cultural references, which was largely my lack, but it was still frustrating. The writing was fine, but I was often confused. I think, in large part, due to some of the bilingual references and misspellings. Still, there were some pretty good, memorable lines throughout. Here's my favorite:
A little crude, but funny. Though I struggled with this book, I must caution that it may have just been me. I may have completely missed the boat or the point. I might have some mental block that is no fault of the author. Many critics really enjoyed this book. Even for me, towards the end, something kind of reminded me of Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut. Mr. Mahajan can take comfort in the fact that I don't really "get" Mr. Vonnegut either. If you "get" that kind of thing, this may be the book for you.
To decide for yourself, you can read the first few chapters of Family Planning and the "P.S." materials here.
Rakesh Ahuja has thirteen children (with one on the way) and a wife whom he is attracted to only when she is pregnant. He is the Minister of Urban Development in the Indian government, but his personal and political clashes are taking their toll. In particular, he's dealing with his immature and moody oldest son, Arjun, and a political coup started by the (on-screen) death of the country's most famous soap star.
I have to say that I just didn't "get" this book. Many of the other reviews characterize it as amusing or farcical. I failed to see the comedy in most of it. I didn't understand many of the cultural references, which was largely my lack, but it was still frustrating. The writing was fine, but I was often confused. I think, in large part, due to some of the bilingual references and misspellings. Still, there were some pretty good, memorable lines throughout. Here's my favorite:
"He was squeezing his butt to hold in the piss. It appeared, strangely, to work."
A little crude, but funny. Though I struggled with this book, I must caution that it may have just been me. I may have completely missed the boat or the point. I might have some mental block that is no fault of the author. Many critics really enjoyed this book. Even for me, towards the end, something kind of reminded me of Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut. Mr. Mahajan can take comfort in the fact that I don't really "get" Mr. Vonnegut either. If you "get" that kind of thing, this may be the book for you.
To decide for yourself, you can read the first few chapters of Family Planning and the "P.S." materials here.
March 11, 2009
The writer grew up in India, came to Stanford for college, and now lives in New York, where I heard him at a reading. He has a wonderful voice, both in life and on the page; it rises humorous, wise, compassionate, and bold, to pull you immediately into the story and guide you companionably forward through it. He also has a fabulous control of language and I found myself smiling frequently as I read at the sheer bodily pleasure of a perfect yet unexpected phrase or metaphor. The organizing structure of the novel, interlocking chapters devoted alternately to a father of 13 and his eldest son, is elegant and provides an interesting contrast of perspectives on the choices a man can make in his life. The view of India is from a much more modern generation than the other books I have encountered. I would highly recommend reading this novel. Yet it is the author's first book, and the story didn't rise to the level of greatness that I think he will achieve in the future. It is a good tale, (although it drifts off a bit in the end), but did not leave me seared with the imprint of a new truth about life, which the level of his language kept making me hope he would bring me to. He'll get there. In the meantime, the ravishing delight of his words will keep me a fan.
May 23, 2014
Not a great book but did have its moments. It is the story of an Indian politician, his oldest son and his other twelve children. The son's story revolves around his quest to impress a girl by convincing her that he plays in a band. His interaction with friends and family is funny and points out the fickleness of young love. At the same time his father's story revolves around the tragic story of his true love and the arranged marriage that follows her death. Parts of the book's descriptions of the bride switching,the resignations, the traffic flyover to nowhere, the protests regarding a killed soap opera character and the sibling dynamics of a large family kept me reading but the ending was flat and I never really could like the father character. I mostly felt sorry for his second wife.
July 25, 2011
I'm always a little suspicious of books labeled as "darkly comic" or "comic novels," because quite often an editor or publisher's idea of funny and mine are fairly different. I enjoyed this book a lot but I don't know that it's all that funny. It's a very interesting story, however, of an Indian government official, his fairly disconnected wife and their 13 children. The juxtaposition of Mr. Ahuja's viewpoints with his oldest son's worked really well, although I'll admit some of the descriptions of Indian government lost me a bit. At its core this is the story of a man struggling with his job and his family, and a son struggling with growing up and dealing with his family.
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