Sethji by Shobhaa Dé
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
You wouldn’t have expected a book that plastic-y from a “veteran” author such as Shobhaa De. Maybe once upon a time in a distant, ancient, rural and rustic India, such indecency would have shocked the people of this country and indeed would have made her a runaway success (it actually has!). But today, books like ‘Sethji’ look extremely amateurish – especially written for addicts, perverts and highly frustrated guys.
Not one guy/gal in this book (except for some very docile old ladies!) is normal and it seems everyone loves having extramarital affairs!
The plot line of this book has been chewed in, in thousands of Bollywood ‘dishum-dishums’. Plus, this book lacks in content or emotion. Well, if your sons die, you would at least feel sad for 2 minutes, right? But Sethji is like Maggi noodles…..2 minute main ready…
Well of course, Ms. De wanted to create Howard Roark and Dominique Francon out of MK and Amrita, what she had managed to do is indeed laughable. Amrita is described as a stony lass with a cold reasoning mind, but all she has done in this book is to toss in one man’s arms and turn in other’s. She as one of the book’s primary characters is a nobody! She neither is headstrong nor does she take any such decisions that would make readers feel in awe of her. Only due to Ms. De’s promptings and nudges, we grudgingly accept that some particular deed in the book maybe, minutely, passably be considered as daring. Sethji himself is extremely gross, all I remember of him is that, “He scratches his groin while thinking” splattered across the book 2-3 times. This is like saying that Chacha Chaudhary‘s brain works faster than a supercomputer, but it is just at least a 1000 times vulgar.
Well, I am not crying ethics and conscience! I am not a saffron-clad purist, but this is an insult to the reader!! Does number of sultry and wet scenes guarantee that an Indian reader (though he may be starved and constricted in the choking grips of the hypocritical and narrow-minded customs of this country) would simply adore the book? That maybe be the icing, but don’t pass it up as a cake. The cake has to be content.
Plus the Hinglish used was extremely jarring, as if each and every character in this book was a “Gori Mem” of the Pre-Independence era. Well, Ms. De does know few North Indian expletives, but to use it even when the setup doesn’t require it – maybe, she is trying to sound cool.
But of course, Ms. De is a good English writer. Her writing is extremely fluent. All I would like to do is to request her not to consider her readers as dogs whose saliva is always dripping, who are gullible, stupid and unconscionable lechers.
Alienman 