Skip to main content

Book Review: I am in Love with a Shudh Desi Firangi by Dipnanda Bhaduri Roy

I am in Love with a Shudh Desi Firangi by Dipnanda Bhaduri Roy is a captivating romance novel with doses of religious spirituality. The novel is built around the lead character Kattyayani (Katty) Chatterjee. She is simple, sober, academically brilliant, and to some extent the pride flag bearer of her family. However, her only mistake was that she fell in love with a wrong guy…yes…you heard right? Just on the day of her examination, she gets the breakup news. Her six-year-long boyfriend Arnab breaks with her. The reasons are her coldness and lackluster in overall grooming and so on.


Anyway, post the breakup, like many other girls, she too felt depressed and got a little diffident on the topic of love. The initial part of the novel deals with tension and depression, a kind of melancholy lingers. Surprisingly, there was no weeping and wailing from the girl’s side.

With family history, cultural ethos and beliefs, and Calcutta as a backdrop, the novel chugs ahead silently. It’s to be noted that to some extent her family, owing to joint living, is conservative and marriages outside religion or state are not reckoned with a sense of blessing. On the other hand, one of her Aunts Binota married a Christian and settled in Goa. She is being accepted after two decades when all is rich and fine in her life. There is nothing negative about the family values as they fear about social security when a girl tries to go outside her realms. So, the burden on Katty is right. But can she control her feelings if she fell in love again…not with a Bengali guy…but someone else?

The middle phase of the novel takes us to Goa and Katty is there at her aunt Binota’s house. There she stumbles upon Rudra, a white foreigner. The chances of being in love resurface again for Katty. Will she be up again? The eulogy for the lord Shiva runs like banter throughout the novel. Seems like Katty is Shiva fan – she cares for prayers, chants, virtues, belief and much more. In Rudra, she sees some reflections of lord Shiva and this brings her close to him. But well before that, in the novel, there have been many back stories, sweeps, and sub-themes. All round up for a riveting read.

Filled with thrill, suspense, drama, and feelings, the love story begins simmering. Will she be able to get the love of Rudra – who is he, what country does he belong to, is he really a Shiva follower or just another gimmick in the heat of Goa’s tourist culture? As a reader, you will be enthralled to know the tenacity and endeavors of Katty to find her man of dreams and veracity. Will she succeed or land up in another dead end? Above feelings and everything else, can the young lovers overtake the barriers laid out by social stratification? Can love win and survive – over all boundaries and barriers?

Dipnanda Bhaduri Roy is a capable author of romance genre. This novel turned out to be a smooth one, anyone could finish reading it in one go. Her way of shuttling stories from one backdrop to another and narration skills are impressive. For romance readers, it definitely is a good read.

In Interview with Dipnanda Bhaduri Roy.

Comments

  1. Thank you so much for this detailed feedback. Loving the perspectives that you have pointed out.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Poem Summary: Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Poem by Rabindranath Tagore: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. Short Summary: This poem is written by Rabindranath Tagore during pre-independence days, when India was a colony of the British. The underlying theme of the poem is absolute freedom; the poet wants the citizens of his country to be living in a free state. According to the poem, we see that the poet is expressing his views there should be a country, like where people live without any sort of fear and with pure dignity…they should

Book Review: The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond

Among all Ruskin Bond books, The Blue Umbrella has, so far, gathered immense applaud from readers and critics alike.  This is a short novel, but the kind of moral lessons it teaches to us are simply overwhelming. This is a story of Binya, a poor little girl living with her mother and an elder brother, Bijju, in a small hilly village of Garhwal. One day while herding her two cows back home, she stumbles upon some city people enjoying the picnic in the valley. She is enthralled to see them well-groomed and rich. She craves to be one like them and among many other things of their, a blue frilly umbrella catches her attention. She begins craving for it. On the other hand, the city people get attracted by her innocent beauty and the pendant in her neck. The pendant consists of leopard’s claw – which is considered a mascot widely in the hills. Binya trades her pendant off with the blue umbrella. The blue umbrella is so much beautiful that soon it becomes a topic of conversation fo

Poem Summary: Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias is a short poem of fourteen lines written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The concurrent theme of the poem is that nothing remains intact and same forever in this world. Even the brightest of metal, one day decays with passage of time. The throne name of Egyptian King Ramesses is Ozymandias. It was his dearest desire to preserve himself forever by building a huge statue that he thought would never tumble down. Stanza 1: I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; Summary: The poet narrates the poem through the eyes of a traveler who seems to have come back from a remote and far-away land, referring to Egypt. The traveler r