Every once in a while, on lazy, rainy days, I like to read my chick lit, no apologies and thank you very much. Of course the genre, rather young in itself, is best represented by the cult classic Bridget Jones’ Diary by Helen Fielding, later filmed into a delightful version starring Renee Zwelleger. In the course of the novel the eponymous, thirty-something and single, bright, often bumbling protagonist tries to make sense of life and love in the 1990s, along with a bunch of friends (only female and gay, since nobody else will understand the pangs of such singledom!). Along the way they explicate upon (and survive through) the concept of emotional turmoil wrought by men who can fall anywhere along a wide spectrum of specimens – ranging from womanizers to commitment-phobes.

Advaita Kala’s Almost Single is clearly in the same mould, her Aisha, an Indian Bridget.

Aisha Bhatia works in a five star hotel, but she is a rather reluctant misfit here, often tramping around in a pair of trainers concealed under the dainty saree-uniform! She hates her job (where she even has to organise her ex’s wedding!), loathes her philandering boss-from-hell, tolerates her colleagues and has hardly any illusions about the fact that hers is only a job, not a high-powered career thing which might have been a good ruse for singledom.

Thus the wait for that perfect man… a most recurrent motif of chick-lit.

Chick-lit, often considered a derogatory phase, represents a new, and very significant genre which has made a mark in the world of books in the last decade. However, as one analyses, its mix of comedy-of-manners meets romantic-comedy, is hardly new at all, drawing from sources as diverse as Shakespeare, Jane Austen and vintage Hollywood. It is humour, above all, an ability to laugh at onerself, and giggle at the world, that makes a Bridget Jones, a Rebecca Bloomwood (of the Shopaholic series fame), and yes, an Aisha Bhatia, different from the swoony-lacrimal heroines of yesteryear! An ability she retains even when, as in the case of Rebecca Bloomwood, she progresses into matrimony and motherhood.

What sets these books apart, is its absolute and utterly delectable, woman-ist+ perspective, laced with a great deal of irreverence, which becomes the unique lens through which to read the ultimately Mills-and-Boonesque core. While gorgeous descriptions of the wish-fulfilment kind remain, of clothes, locales and food, these new best sellers, tongue firmly in cheek, cut out the sentimentality and false seriousness of the Danielle Steele kind of romances. Authored largely by women, these books are assumed to have a greater readership among women too, but this is an aspect that makes me rather curious. (It might be interesting to have some biblio-statisticians doing the Math to find out more about the cross section of readers of these books).

Set in New Delhi, and romping through a tour of clubs, coffee shops and other niche joints, Almost Single is generous with its potshots at wannabes and pretenders who rather abound in the capital, as also at the unbearably patronising and complacent ‘happily-married’, or ‘happily-engaged’ women of the same generation:

“What is it about single women in our age group? The day they find a man, they totally disconnect from the rest. Their single girlfriends become a burden, reminders of how close they came to missing the boat.”

Amid the humdrum of the metropolis are the three girls (half-hearted aspirants to being ‘women of substance’) – Aisha, and her two best friends, “soul buddies, really”, Misha and Anushka, with whom she “bonds big time”, over endless cups of coffee or comfort shopping. The chief problem in Misha and Aisha’s life, much as that of Jane Austen’s heroines, is the sheer dearth of marriageable men. Anushka’s troubles lie elsewhere – in locating the perfect closure to her very messy divorce. Says Aisha,

“She was our poster child for 'love conquers all' until about eight months ago, when she decided to surprise him on their wedding anniversary… To cut a long story short, Anushka soon turned into a poster child for the newly single community.”

Their commiserating sessions often include their gay friends Ric and Nic, and are routinely disrupted by the nosy neighbour Mrs. Mukherjee, who is thoroughly disapproving of what she presumes to be their ‘single-ready-to-mingle-wantonness’. But the girls are not all that un-traditional either. When only losers enter their lives in the guise of eligible bachelors, the matrimonial ad on the world-wide-web backfires, the returned NRI hero seems to be slipping away to some vampish Tanya, and even a karva chauth celebration does nothing – desperate measures are called for. After the regular dose of Shastrijis, Gurus and Swamis, a Roshni Ma in a Mitsubishi Lancer surfaces, and takes the cake.

Underneath all the irreverence, the theme of Almost Single is quintessentially romantic – the search for the perfect, or at least the almost perfect mate. And while the biological clock ticks on, the paranoid mother does ridiculous things to pair off the “touching-thirty” daughter and the boss behaves as cockily as ever, Aisha survives, to find a happily ever after indeed. As do, Misha and Anushka.

The novel is an eminently readable one, albeit entirely predictable. Single women in metros everywhere would heartily agree with the sisterhood saga, and all readers, irrespective of gender, would savour the delightfully dishy humour. By choosing to remain firmly within the formula, Kala does not attempt to question the norms of the day which lead her upper class, educated heroines to look for love only in a certain kind of man – foreign returned or settled, rich and posh, and invariably clad in designer wear, but her characters “go with the flow” and find their wishes fulfilled. Unlike Jane Austen’s heroines, who had no other choice but marriage to remain afloat, modern day women have a plethora of possibilities… and yet, it seems, that to many of these daughters and mothers, even today, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

But wish fulfillment and happy endings, are no crime per se. And like I said, it’s a laugh riot and a great one time read for lazy, rainy days.

Devapriya Roy is pursuing an M Phil programme in the School for Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She also works as a Profect Fellow with Indian Literature, Sahitya Academy. An alumni of Presidency College, Kolkata, her interests include dramatics and literature.

+ Alice Walker coined the term ‘womanism’ in her book In Search of Her Mother’s Gardens.

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