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Literary Review
First Impression
SUCHITRA BEHAL
Boots Belts Berets; Tanushree Podder; IndiaInk; Rs.295.
We have to thank Chetan Bhagat for popularising a genre of writing that most Indian book editors would dump into without skipping a beat. After chick lit and college sagas comes Tanushree Podder’s Boots Belts Berets delves in
to the lives of the freshers at India’s premier defence academy, NDA.
The book starts off with a batch of freshers undergoing training at the NDA. Most are greenhorns but soon fall into line when they realise that there’s hell to pay if they don’t. There are unforgiving seniors whose only joy in life is to bug the freshers, bark orders and make their lives even more miserable. The teachers are as varied and while most spell doom for the poor freshers, the man behind the breakfast counter is the most loved. Even those with fastidious tastes develop a respect for food of any kind.
A motley crowd of freshers is thrown together here, most sticking with each other due to the proximity of their rooms. But that’s another thing about hostels — they teach you to be more tolerant and to live with most people. While there are pranks galore there is also an element of seriousness. But mostly it confirms that life at the academy can be a riot if taken in the right spirit. The NDA is not a place for the faint-hearted. Read it if you’re planning on joining the forces and otherwise too. It helps pass a few hours.
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Dirty Picture; Anuradha Marwah; Indialog Publications; Rs. 195.
The Ajmer sex scandal shook up a small town and the State Government when it surfaced. Finally the dust died down but at stake were the lives of many young girls who had been caught.
This book recounts, as fiction, the life of one of the main victims. Reena and Bharti are two sisters from an ordinary middle class family. Reena, the elder one, divorces her drug addict husband and embarks on an affair with her married boss, much to the despair of her father and ailing mother.
But it is 15-year-old Bharti who dominates this story. Bharti has political ambitions and is part of a group of young men who represent the party. While she is filled with reformatory zeal her naivety makes her an unwilling partner with one young man who asks her to marry him. Inexperienced and unable to turn his attention off her, Bharti continues the relationship. Things take a turn for the worse when the party candidate insists that Bharti be used to keep the minister and others happy.
She is soon sucked into a dirty vortex of sex, drugs and prostitution from which there seems no escape. While Reena, now back in Ajmer, suspects that Bharti is having an affair she feels she has no moral grounds to question her, given her own situation. Bharti continues to live a double life where she is forced not only to satiate the most base demands but also tricked into recruiting other girls. The last straw comes when her ailing mother is hospitalised and Bharti is called to go to the minister’s house, failing which videos of her having sex with various men would be published.
Desperate and shocked, the young schoolgirl commits suicide but not before implicating the perpetrators of this crime. The book may not have any literary pretensions, and at times, is repetitive but is worth a read since it points out in gory details the ugly nexus between sex and politics.
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