Anurag Mathur is the man who was
Chetan Bhagat in the 90’s and early 00’s. After the unprecedented success of
his book, ‘The Inscrutable Americans’ (the book was even made into a movie),
Mathur fathered several other books. “The Department of Denials” is one of
them.
I found “The Department ofDenials” readable. It’s not massy, it’s not coherent and most importantly, it’s
not Chetan Bhagat. It is undeniably witty but unfortunately not laugh out loud
funny, though Mathur does try ever so hard. However, I found it funnier than “The
Inscrutable Americans” – a book that is almost derogatory towards Indian Americans,
without really being funny enough to justify its biases.
My sense is the primary reason
people still buy Mathur’s books is because he is a Stephanian, who are alleged
to be a class apart. Trust me, they aren’t. I have met several of them and the
only thing that differentiates Stephen-kind from humanity is that they choose
every opportunity to reiterate the fact that they are Stephanians, as opposed
to other sub-species of human beings I have met.
D.O.D. is a book from an era gone by and not
really a chronicle of India a decade ago. Read “God of Small Things” instead to
understand what India was, is and will be.
No comments:
Post a Comment