Chick-lit amidst Delhi’s fading elite
Stories from the saccharine-sweet Hindu joint family have been an enduring theme for Indian writers and cinema. Twenty-something Himani Dalmia’s first book Life Is Perfect is said to be semi-autobiographical, peppered with salacious details observed within her own sprawling family, who at one time, were leading industrialists of India. (Apparently, a reference in the book to a politician upset him so much that he used his clout to dissuade the original publishers, Penguin. Dalmia eventually got Rupa as publisher.) Set in modern Delhi, Dalmia vacillates between chicklit-ish dilemmas, boys, clothes, girlfriends, to larger issues, like the twisted equations within business families.

College-going Mitali Jaitia is the quintessential It-girl who mingles in Delhi’s illustrious circles with ease, rarely venturing out of Lutyen’s Delhi where she lives in an old bungalow “five minutes from Khan Market”. Mitali appears to have it all, beauty and money, friends, suitors and lovers. But her home, which she shares with an array of uncles and cousins, is in gloom over the tragic death of her cousin, Peeya. (In reality, Dalmia’s cousin died in a car crash on a south Delhi flyover a few years ago.) During the crisis, Mitali’s parents’ marriage is floundering and the atmosphere between relatives at home is more strained than ever. Her father, on a heady cocktail of alcohol and antidepressants, is flaunting a new girlfriend and to her hysterical embarrassment, regularly making appearances on the party pages of newspapers.

Dalmia writes naturally, limiting herself to a small world of Anglicised elites, of people who by the privilege of birth maintain the appearance of prosperity. They haunt colonial era hangouts, have memberships to the right clubs but as Mitali quickly figures out about her own family, they’re becoming irrelevant in the new economy of wired, ambitious professionals. The Marwari tradition of “no onions and garlic in the house” continues but the legacy of fiery, astute, businessmen has vanished. Dalmia writes about the pitfalls of inherited businesses and how a surname is no longer enough to sail through life.

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