Secret Diary Of An Incurable Romantic is written by Chitrangada Mukherjee and published by FiNGERPRINT! It is a well-written fiction.
Blurb
11 pm: Heart’s pounding, hands shaking. Have these knots in my stomach. But drinking isn’t an option. Maa is sleeping with me. Baba in Lalitaji’s room. And she on the sofa.
Want to step into the toilet, take one swig, and then go directly to sleep. How the hell will Maa know? I mean she’s sleeping like a log. No, no shouldn’t. What if she wakes up? She’s a light sleeper after all.
11:30 pm: No wine. Or Vodka. Terrible, terrible night. When will they go back to Kolkata and let me be?
11:32 pm: Chhi…Chhi How shellfish am I? My parents, one with a heart condition, spent thousands on flight tickets and landed in Chennai. Why? Because they wanted to spend time with their widowed daughter. And what does the daughter want? To sneak into the toilet and take one good swig of wine. Shame on her!
Okay, now I’m being over-dramatic.
Meet Madhubala Ray, an incorrigible romantic,
a closet alcoholic, and a thirty-year-old
brand-spanking-new widow in Chennai.
She lives with her seventy-year-old mostly-silent MIL-whose name she can’t remember, teaches Social Science to bratty teenagers, and suddenly has a life filled with unpredictable men, catty colleagues, a bisexual best friend, and… heart-wrenching memories of her late husband.
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How do you deal with all of that?
If you are Madhu, you write. Join the oddball-widow who always keeps it real as she gives an honest account of a young North Indian working woman in Chennai, who tries to survive through wine and vodka, her quirky sense of humor, and refuses to give up on love. Despite its oddities. The question is: does she survive and find love again?
Introduction
This book is about love, desires, complicated relations, the key message is love can knock at your door, at any age, so don’t give up. We all crave for honest love but is love really that pure and pious as mentioned in Barbara Cartland books. Or love in the modern world is also driven by survival needs. I believe the novel is a practical take on changing dynamic of relationships. You might get married to someone but after a point of time, might get attracted to other person, without any particular reason. The plot somewhere also reveals human selfishness but it definitely holds mirror to today’s society.
Plot
Madhubala is a young widow, who is trying to overcome the loss of her husband. She stays with her mother in law, they rarely communicate with each other. The only thing to give her company, when she misses her husband badly is- alcohol. Few months after her husband’s death she rejoins her school, where she meet Daksh, the biology teacher who is hot and young. They both get into a non-commitment relationship, where only physical needs matter. Madhu’s childhood friend Pintu tries to bring her back to normal life. He is a constant source of strength , but somehow from a platonic friendship Pintu starts having sexual feeling towards her. Madhu still believe in love stories and crave for never ending love. Will she find true love again? Or there is nothing like true love, it is just a mirage created by human mind? Pick up the book to understand raw human emotions, pain, fear and insecurities.
The plot is very candid, where there are no heroes, there are only mortals who strive to live each day. In the process also commit mistakes and tend to grow.
Verdict
This book is like a reality check, would surely recommend the novel.
