Sreemoyee Piu Kundu
You've Got the Wrong Girl
India: Hachette, 2016
376 pp. ₹350
ISBN: 9789350095805
Summary: A girl, put off by the pomp and show of a big-fat
wedding, decides to take a stroll in a garden adjoining the venue of a wedding
happening somewhere in the vicinity of Taj Mahal and takes notice of a boy who
seems like rehearsing a hate speech. Following a long, meaningless yet interesting
conversation, they both make out. Revealing nothing about each other, they
part, with the girl taking a promise that the boy will never search
for her. Letting every detail of that night out to everyone in the form a book,
which eventually becomes a bestseller, while still trying to preserve it for
himself, he’s, after good three years, now poked for a sequel to the first
part. The first part was not a fiction. The second part could also not be a
work of fiction. The boy now wants to look for the girl to complete his ‘love’ story.
He has an ex-girlfriend who decides to come back. There is a whole lot of intriguing
twists and interesting mess. Everyone deserves a love story.
What
really clicked? The title! It really intrigues a casual onlooker to further
nosedive deep into the story, the message and the end.
My take: The book spans in three units – book one, book two and book
three – all comprising of the perfect masala brewing in the protagonist,
Dushyant’s life. Dushyant is an author by fluke, and ends up getting the plot
for his first book following the incidents happening in his life. His
girlfriend from school ends up getting hitched with his best friend, and this
causes him to gatecrash their wedding. While he rehearses his hate speech in a
garden adjacent to the venue, he ends up meeting Diya, a mysterious girl who is
bored of the wedding and needed a break. They make out without really letting
out much information about each other, including their names and part promising
they won’t try to look for each other.
The rest of the first part would seem more of a drag where the
author is being convinced by his publishing manager and his close aide,
Bhaskar, to come out with a sequel to his first book which entirely talks about
this fling with a stranger and the aftereffects it had on his mind.
The second and the third part talk about how he finds the girl,
clue by clue, and what goes on when they meet in a super shady, red light area
of Kolkata, Sonagachi, how things f*ck up further due to misunderstandings
which occur when his ex-girlfriend decides to come back to his life and how
every character in the story, be it Bhaskar, Pri (sister), Dad and Mom (of
Dushyant), Anjali (the ex), Vicky, (the best friend) and Shonali (assistant of
Diya in an NGO where she works), have a definite role to play which contributes
to giving a pace to the story.
The story gets terribly lengthy and verbose defining the first
night that Dushyant gets to spend with Diya and further references to this
sound clichéd all the while. The author has also added a lot of drama to the
story using the Vitamin ‘sex’, which has only made the story something to stay
glued to.
The author's writing style has improved leaps and bounds from her last release, Sita's curse. The well-researched parts of the story, including description of the places unexplored in Kolkata, narration of the connection of the protagonist with Kalidasa's Abhigyan Shakuntalam and of the hi-fi weddings all seem perfectly fitted together, each having a message to convey in the bigger meaning of the story. This book by Kundu shall make you stay entertained to the last page, while also giving you occasional spaces to yawn and can-but-won't skip.
Final word: There are some stories which, despite being
predictable towards the end, do not sound clichéd and this book is one from the
lot. This, my second read from Kundu, is a great work of fiction which stands
on a whole lot of research, sound logic and all sorts of nonsensical feelings
one goes through while falling and being in love!
2 comments:
Good review.
Thank you, Tomichan! Happy reading :)
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