Madhuri Banerjee's virgin book "Losing Virginity and other Dumb Ideas" is a big flop in fiction writing. It lacks creativity, besides flow and spunk in the narration at certain parts of the book. Thanks to the dumb book review by Times of India (The book starts off as a chicklit, goes on to become one of those M&B romantic tales and finally ends in Kaveri’s spiritual contentment very Paulo Coelho-esque..seriously?!?!), it was a mistake buying and then completing it in one sitting. Only cliche´d dialogues and plots sprinkled all over the book, it was a typical B-grade Indian writer literature. In one of her interviews, the writer quoted "I wanted to use the word ‘virginity’ on the cover of an Indian novel because it has never been done before. It opens up a stream of consciousness that can lead to dialogue." That was really a cheap shot at publicity, because even the love scenes in the book were mediocre and lack-lusture. Indian writers are really terrible at writing sex scenes. But the book did live upto its title of having plain "dumb ideas". Just to prove the adventurous creativity of the writer, she makes the protagonist have sex in the beach, the washroom and then finally in a hot air balloon.(Can she get any more typical?!?!) The plots were just pages out of Cosmo and similar glossies.
Not to mention the whole sob story of a single 30 year old lonely yet "intellectual" woman. Its really sad to see how these writers portray woman in their 30s in such poor light. From my recent research on Indian woman writers, there is this whole genre of chick-lit which have very similar protagonists - 30, single, pseudo-independent metropolitan women who likes to go "dutch" even on dates yet desperately seeks a serious relationship. Enters the Prince Charming a.k.a the Great Emancipator or the Source of All Life -sexy, sauve, impeccable table manners and over-the-top bedside manners(sic!). Even the ogre tales sound much more realistic than these fantasy concocted men.
But lets not forget, the biggest selling plot of all times - the emotionally abused woman, how she overcomes the "love-hurdles" and then becomes the lady Buddha with all the enlightenment on men, love and all that bullshit. This is how all the books written by this genre of woman writers goes.
Chapter 1: Women are victims. Men are ba*stards.
Chapter 2: Women are victims. Men are ba*stards.
Chapter 3: Women are victims. Men are ba*stards.
Last before the Final Chapter: So after 99 chapters of emosanal attyachar, victim finally dumps the "bad guy". The fact that it look the protagonist a whole book to dump a guy, shows who is the dumb one.
Final Chapter: The victim now attains the wisdom of Oprah. THE END.
I hate when women loves to wallow in tales of abuse. What happened to the breed of smart, witty protagonists who loves to challenge any situation at hand with great spurts of enthusiasm? They say that there are only seven basic plots in the world of human affairs. And that all stories are simply re-arrangements of these very same plots. Well, when it comes to these female authors, there is usually only one plot.
And we all know what it is.
