A
A book of short humorous pieces, beginning with A – “Am I An Idiot?” – and going all the way to Z – “Zip Your Mouth for God’s Sake”. A few of these are very funny. A few, okay-okay funny. A few affect a general reflective tone (one’s bygone youth, or specific issues of national importance, such as youth suicides).
B
Blimey. Several blimeys in the book. Somehow they felt quite wrong in the otherwise pleasing Indian English, with inventive desi inflections (see V).
C
Consider the voice. What is remarkable about this book is that it breaks certain stereotypes. I mean, mommy bloggers across the world have been speaking this bewitching lingo, and totally rocking the discourse on post-feminism and mommyhood for years now. There is nothing new in that. Theirs is this remarkable patois with in-built jokes about bratty kids, messy homes, crazy schedules, sagging boobs that need to be hoisted over one’s shoulders, and the periodic attack of the momzillas who are always doing everything, like, a gazillion times more perfectly that our slummy mummy protagonists. It is the real world. But this – this is Bollywood!
The moment we think of Bollywood, even the most fancy free among us seems to tune into a collective brain fug. It is almost as though Bollywood is a foreign country, they do things differently there. My friend Gee had gone into spasms of shock when she heard Kajol say in an interview that she was a clean freak and often did the cleaning herself. Why? said Gee, horrified. But why? Why would anybody clean like freaks themselves if they could afford a battery of butlers to oversee a battery of housekeepers, maybe even buy a self-cleaning house? (It is another matter that my friend Gee is obsessive-compulsive about cluttering. So it is a possibility she doesn’t understand the opposite end of the spectrum. But you get my drift.) So for the spouse of a Bollywood superstar to adopt this bewitching mommy-blogger lingo of the joyful nanny-less sleep-deprived brigades is a glorious (if slightly suspect) thing. And indeed, Mrs Funnybones is going to reach many many more people, men and women, I suppose, than the mommy bloggers would have.
Sample this:
D
Dimple Kapadia. Some of the funniest moments in the book are about the author’s mum, who, as it happens, was my grandmum’s most favourite ever. While reading, I was mentally conveying these nuggets to her through the cosmic ethernet.
F
…flights. You’ll breeze through the book between the kursi-ki-peti announcements, the format is helpful, and you’ll particularly enjoy her airline anecdotes. There are several of those.
G
Good cast of characters. The book stars, besides the eponymous Mrs Funnybones, the following:
- Man of the House (You’d known him as Khiladi all these years and it kills you a little).
- The Prodigal Son. (I am NOT a fan of this usage but he seems like an interesting kid. I am planning on trying out his pepper spray recipe.)
- The baby.
- The domestic wonder.
- And cameos: mother, mother-in-law, various Parsis, Kim Kardashian, and several dogs. While most of the dogs are of national provenance, one is mothered by a memorably bossy German woman.
H
Human Calculator. A nickname Khanna garnered for her mathematics skills (see N).
I
Illeism, What is: a quirky thing you’ll learn from this book.
J
Johar. Apparently, Karan Johar is Khanna’s childhood friend. And apparently she is the only girl he was ever in love with. But the Johar factor – good old gossip of the Koffee With Karan type – is completely missing from the book. There is no Bollywood gossip. At all.
K
Karva Chauth: Certain people I know (proud standard bearers of feminism, not mere followers like me) will be quite annoyed as Madame Khanna makes all the right noises at first but ultimately turns Tory on this one.
L
Lame jokes. She admits to cracking several of these in the author profile itself – along with sample of said lame joke – so there is something to be said about self-deprecation and self-reflexivity, which we didn’t know was catching on in Bollywood. Chalo, der aaye par durust etc. etc. There are many lame jokes in the book. There are many good ones too.
M
Menstruation. Certain peoples I know (proud standard bearers of feminism, not mere followers like me) will be quite happy with her views on this. Not the radical ones, I suppose, but then they’d see her as a class enemy anyway and tune out. But for a humorist, I don’t know why she wouldn’t go all anti-earnest and say that these untouchability taboos during periods are such a great idea. I mean, why would you willingly enter the kitchen if you have a cop out? Let the others do the work. Roll in bed and read a book. No? But my point is a larger one here though. Can our feminism be funny? Or is it that the moment we make comments of the above sort – and believe me, usually I don’t – are we opening ourselves to a long lecture about it-can-be-funny-only-after-the-revolution-brings-about-equality? Genuinely curious.
N
Ninety-seven. Maths marks of the Human Calculator (see H) in board exams. Also, her weight during said boards.
O
Other avatars. Mrs Funnybones has several women jostling inside:
P
(Reluctant) Punjabi daughter-in-law.
Q
Quippy questioner of social mores.
R
Righter of all wrongs done to dumb down Bollywives.
S
Sexy celebrity who sometimes does photo-shoots posing like a teapot.
T
Tired mum-of-two who likes to tweet.
U
Understandably, the above avatars often disagree with each other. It is this which makes the book rather honest.
V
Very Dangerous. Khanna has quite the ear for reporting linguistic peculiarities.
W
What did Mrs Irani (a Parsi electrical contractor hired by Khanna, not our Honourable Human Resources Minister) do to get a defaulter to clear her dues? Another quirky thing you’ll learn from this book.
X
seX. Not much in the book, but a brief glimpse of the famous UnButton episode that caused a sansani kissaa about ashleelta and resulted in an arrest warrant against Khanna.
Y
Yelp! Self-reflexivity, anyone? “She’s just like you and a lot like me,” says the tag line. (Except without the crores. Naturally.)
Z
Zipping ahead. I enjoyed the book. My hope, however, is that that Khanna writes a meatier book next. The thing about books – even books that are clearly meant to be mass market, and meant to cater to the attention span of an entire generation addicted to social media – is that they need to be more than a sum of pieces that would be perfectly fine as standalone features in other media.
It can’t be easy to find time, I can imagine, what with a day job, two kids and star wife schedules. But I daresay Khanna will really come into her own with a book that requires greater commitment. The promise in her voice is apparent. (Though I must clarify, the book is not rehashed from her columns but contains fresh pieces written exclusively for the book. But the tone remains very newspaper column-ey.)
A humorous memoir, perhaps, would appeal to her sensibilities? Like Tina Fey’s Bossypants, Rachel Dratch’s Girl Walks Into a Bar: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters and a Midlife Miracle or Amy Poehler’s Yes, Please? It is a genre that is mostly missing in India at the moment – a situation that certainly needs remedying.
Devapriya Roy is the author of two novels, The Vague Woman’s Handbook and The Weight Loss Club. Her latest book, The Heat and Dust Project: the Broke Couple’s Guide to Bharat, co-written with husband Saurav Jha, is an account of a crazy journey across India on a very very tight budget.
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A book of short humorous pieces, beginning with A – “Am I An Idiot?” – and going all the way to Z – “Zip Your Mouth for God’s Sake”. A few of these are very funny. A few, okay-okay funny. A few affect a general reflective tone (one’s bygone youth, or specific issues of national importance, such as youth suicides).
B
Blimey. Several blimeys in the book. Somehow they felt quite wrong in the otherwise pleasing Indian English, with inventive desi inflections (see V).
C
Consider the voice. What is remarkable about this book is that it breaks certain stereotypes. I mean, mommy bloggers across the world have been speaking this bewitching lingo, and totally rocking the discourse on post-feminism and mommyhood for years now. There is nothing new in that. Theirs is this remarkable patois with in-built jokes about bratty kids, messy homes, crazy schedules, sagging boobs that need to be hoisted over one’s shoulders, and the periodic attack of the momzillas who are always doing everything, like, a gazillion times more perfectly that our slummy mummy protagonists. It is the real world. But this – this is Bollywood!
The moment we think of Bollywood, even the most fancy free among us seems to tune into a collective brain fug. It is almost as though Bollywood is a foreign country, they do things differently there. My friend Gee had gone into spasms of shock when she heard Kajol say in an interview that she was a clean freak and often did the cleaning herself. Why? said Gee, horrified. But why? Why would anybody clean like freaks themselves if they could afford a battery of butlers to oversee a battery of housekeepers, maybe even buy a self-cleaning house? (It is another matter that my friend Gee is obsessive-compulsive about cluttering. So it is a possibility she doesn’t understand the opposite end of the spectrum. But you get my drift.) So for the spouse of a Bollywood superstar to adopt this bewitching mommy-blogger lingo of the joyful nanny-less sleep-deprived brigades is a glorious (if slightly suspect) thing. And indeed, Mrs Funnybones is going to reach many many more people, men and women, I suppose, than the mommy bloggers would have.
Sample this:
TO-DO TODAY
Remove brownie stain from the sofa.
Remove stains from my new pants when I sat on the brownie on the sofa.
Box son on the head for saying he stored the brownie behind the cushion on the sofa for safekeeping.
D
Dimple Kapadia. Some of the funniest moments in the book are about the author’s mum, who, as it happens, was my grandmum’s most favourite ever. While reading, I was mentally conveying these nuggets to her through the cosmic ethernet.
Back home and with time to spare, I decide to take the baby (fondly referred to as the ‘little beast’ to my mother’s house so that she can harass other members of the family besides me.
I get there and mother dearest is sitting with her close friend, Honey, and trying to call up their friend, Bubble. Honey! Bubble! Dimple!
Does anyone still wonder why I have been lumped with a name that rhymes with sprinkle and wrinkle?
I am then informed by my mother that her weekly task of torturing me by showing me strange sculptures that she excavates from unknown sources and then tries to place in precarious corners of my house, has unfortunately come to a halt because she has been very busy promoting her new movie. And as I am secretly praying that her promotional activities don’t stop for a few more months, she informs me that I must not get very disheartened as she has spoken to an antique shop dealer who is sending a 7-foot statue of a one-armed woman to my house early next week.
E
Easy to read; easy on the eye. It’s got little sketches and cute listicles. All that makes it perfect for reading on…
F
…flights. You’ll breeze through the book between the kursi-ki-peti announcements, the format is helpful, and you’ll particularly enjoy her airline anecdotes. There are several of those.
G
Good cast of characters. The book stars, besides the eponymous Mrs Funnybones, the following:
- Man of the House (You’d known him as Khiladi all these years and it kills you a little).
- The Prodigal Son. (I am NOT a fan of this usage but he seems like an interesting kid. I am planning on trying out his pepper spray recipe.)
- The baby.
- The domestic wonder.
- And cameos: mother, mother-in-law, various Parsis, Kim Kardashian, and several dogs. While most of the dogs are of national provenance, one is mothered by a memorably bossy German woman.
H
Human Calculator. A nickname Khanna garnered for her mathematics skills (see N).
I
Illeism, What is: a quirky thing you’ll learn from this book.
J
Johar. Apparently, Karan Johar is Khanna’s childhood friend. And apparently she is the only girl he was ever in love with. But the Johar factor – good old gossip of the Koffee With Karan type – is completely missing from the book. There is no Bollywood gossip. At all.
K
Karva Chauth: Certain people I know (proud standard bearers of feminism, not mere followers like me) will be quite annoyed as Madame Khanna makes all the right noises at first but ultimately turns Tory on this one.
L
Lame jokes. She admits to cracking several of these in the author profile itself – along with sample of said lame joke – so there is something to be said about self-deprecation and self-reflexivity, which we didn’t know was catching on in Bollywood. Chalo, der aaye par durust etc. etc. There are many lame jokes in the book. There are many good ones too.
Son: Can I pack my Nerf gun?
Me: Sure! And when they arrest you at the airport, you can shoot them and run away.
Son: Your jokes suck, Mom.Son: Why is the Wi-Fi not working?
Me: Mansukh bhai, the Internet guy, has been assassinated by school moms.
Son: Daad! Can’t take this anymore.
M
Menstruation. Certain peoples I know (proud standard bearers of feminism, not mere followers like me) will be quite happy with her views on this. Not the radical ones, I suppose, but then they’d see her as a class enemy anyway and tune out. But for a humorist, I don’t know why she wouldn’t go all anti-earnest and say that these untouchability taboos during periods are such a great idea. I mean, why would you willingly enter the kitchen if you have a cop out? Let the others do the work. Roll in bed and read a book. No? But my point is a larger one here though. Can our feminism be funny? Or is it that the moment we make comments of the above sort – and believe me, usually I don’t – are we opening ourselves to a long lecture about it-can-be-funny-only-after-the-revolution-brings-about-equality? Genuinely curious.
N
Ninety-seven. Maths marks of the Human Calculator (see H) in board exams. Also, her weight during said boards.
O
Other avatars. Mrs Funnybones has several women jostling inside:
P
(Reluctant) Punjabi daughter-in-law.
Q
Quippy questioner of social mores.
R
Righter of all wrongs done to dumb down Bollywives.
S
Sexy celebrity who sometimes does photo-shoots posing like a teapot.
T
Tired mum-of-two who likes to tweet.
U
Understandably, the above avatars often disagree with each other. It is this which makes the book rather honest.
V
Very Dangerous. Khanna has quite the ear for reporting linguistic peculiarities.
11 a.m. Sitting in front of the computer and drinking coffee, I spot an email from my accountant stating, “Dear Madam, My sister very dangerous. I want to saw her. Please give leave three days! Good day, Sreenivasan.”
W
What did Mrs Irani (a Parsi electrical contractor hired by Khanna, not our Honourable Human Resources Minister) do to get a defaulter to clear her dues? Another quirky thing you’ll learn from this book.
X
seX. Not much in the book, but a brief glimpse of the famous UnButton episode that caused a sansani kissaa about ashleelta and resulted in an arrest warrant against Khanna.
Y
Yelp! Self-reflexivity, anyone? “She’s just like you and a lot like me,” says the tag line. (Except without the crores. Naturally.)
Z
Zipping ahead. I enjoyed the book. My hope, however, is that that Khanna writes a meatier book next. The thing about books – even books that are clearly meant to be mass market, and meant to cater to the attention span of an entire generation addicted to social media – is that they need to be more than a sum of pieces that would be perfectly fine as standalone features in other media.
It can’t be easy to find time, I can imagine, what with a day job, two kids and star wife schedules. But I daresay Khanna will really come into her own with a book that requires greater commitment. The promise in her voice is apparent. (Though I must clarify, the book is not rehashed from her columns but contains fresh pieces written exclusively for the book. But the tone remains very newspaper column-ey.)
A humorous memoir, perhaps, would appeal to her sensibilities? Like Tina Fey’s Bossypants, Rachel Dratch’s Girl Walks Into a Bar: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters and a Midlife Miracle or Amy Poehler’s Yes, Please? It is a genre that is mostly missing in India at the moment – a situation that certainly needs remedying.
Devapriya Roy is the author of two novels, The Vague Woman’s Handbook and The Weight Loss Club. Her latest book, The Heat and Dust Project: the Broke Couple’s Guide to Bharat, co-written with husband Saurav Jha, is an account of a crazy journey across India on a very very tight budget.