One Indian Girl (Bhagat)

One Indian Girl 
Chetan Bhagat, 2016
Rupa Publications
280 pp.
ISBN-13: 9788129142146


Summary
Hi, I'm Radhika Mehta and I'm getting married this week.

I work at Goldman Sachs, an investment bank.

Thank you for reading my story.

However, let me warn you. You may not like me too much. One, I make a lot of money. Two, I have an opinion on everything. Three, I have had a boyfriend before. Ok, maybe two.

Now if all this was the case with a guy, one might be cool with it. But since I am a girl these three things I mentioned don't really make me too likeable, do they?

Bestselling author Chetan Bhagat, writing for the first time in a female voice, brings to you One Indian Girl, the heart-warming story of a modern Indian girl. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—April 22, 1974
• Where—New Dehli, India
• Education—M.E., Indian Inst. of Technology; M.B.A, Indian Inst. of Management
• Awards—Time's 100 Most Influential People list
• Currently—lives in Mumbai, India


Chetan Bhagat is the Indian author of numerous bestselling books. These include the novels Five Point Someone (2004), One Night @ the Call Center (2005), The 3 Mistakes of My Life (2008), 2 States (2009), Revolution 2020 (2011),  Half Girlfriend (2014), and One Indian Girl (2016). He has also published two collections of speeches, columns, and essays, What Young India Wants (2012) and Making India Awesome (2015).

Chetan’s books have remained bestsellers since their release, and several of the novels have been adapted into Bollywood films. The New York Times called Chetan the "the biggest selling English language novelist in India’s history." Time magazine named him among the "100 most influential people in the world" and Fast Company, USA, listed him as one of the world’s "100 most creative people in business."

In addition to his books, Chetan writes columns for leading English and Hindi newspapers, focusing on youth and national development issues. He is also a motivational speaker and screenplay writer. In 2009 he quit his international investment banking career to devote himsself to full-time writing and to making change happen in the country.

He lives in Mumbai with his wife, Anusha, who was his classmate at the Indian Institute of Management, and their twin boys, Shyam and Ishaan. (From the author's webpage.)

Book Reviews
Bhagat’s first ever female narrator is a strong, female character that one can root for.But you can’t help spot the problems. Why are all the women in the book set up in opposition to each other? Her mother nags her to get married, her sister is obsessed with appearances, but Radhika never rises above her contempt for them. Bhagat gets some things right. He captures perfectly the discomfort a modern woman might feel when she’s expected to act like a shy, obedient dulhan. When relatives flock to see the bride-to-be, she wryly remarks: “The monkey was out of the cage and there was a free sighting in the lobby.” She says all the right things about how giving women the right to choose is not enough—they need to have the right to choose the things they want, not what men want.
India Express


Two things make you wince in this book. The biggest is how Bhagat lays on the feminism too thick. The stereotypes he paints are far removed from reality—that an intelligent woman has to be a nerd who has never had her legs waxed, or is clueless on how to interact with men.... Goldman Sachs is the second pain in the book. As per Bhagat, there can’t be a more sympathetic, fair, just and great place to work at. It just might be, but the author didn’t have to extoll the virtues of Goldman Sachs on every page,
Financial Express

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