After reading Those Pricey Thakur Girls by Anuja Chauhan I sincerely felt tempted to change it’s title to those spicy Thakur girls. All five or at least say three of them were much more advance than their age. I could be wrong but this was what I felt while reading.
This could be one reason why the author refrained from giving any time period. Though here and there some hints and reference of handsome Prime Minister, aftermath affects of riots of 1984, license raj, bofor scam indicates the time period of Rajiv Gandhi prime minister ship.
The story revolves around the five daughters of retired judge LN Thakur with main focus on his favourite daughter Debjani and his crush Dylan Singh Shekhawat. Like any typical Bollywood romantic movie, hero and heroine meets, their heart flutters, then misunderstanding surfaces and story ends with their reconciliation. I have heard this is the fix format in which she writes all her books.
Those Pricey Thakur Girls follows more or less this story line. It was interesting to read about Dylan stint as a journalist uncovering the real culprit behind the riots of 1984, Debjani working as a news reader for DeshDarpan, friction in their love story. All these were good to read. The entire Motla episode provided an excellent twist to the story.
The story is family oriented and like in a family one can find every type of human being, in the book as well Anuja has included every type of character. Some are adorable, some are irritating. There are also characters who are selfish and characters who are supporting and understanding. None of them were perfect. They all had some flaws and were humanly. Protagonist Debjani and Dylan were lovable in spite of the shortcomings.
But Anuja Chauhan has messed up this simple story line by adding unnecessary, uninteresting and badly written subplots in the story. They were like eye sore and complete distraction from the main story. Chachiji’s story was complete bogus to read. Anjini, eldest Thakur sister’s story was promising but again nothing much happened. So is the other sisters stories. Eshwari’s story was not interesting to read. There was nothing much written about other two sister.
Subplots hampered the pace of the novel and it was sluggish and slow to read. In fact sometimes it used to get slow like Balaji TV serial with story going no where. Only occasional introduction of some twist and turns were boosting life into the story. Almost initial 40 pages were used for story build up before the appearance of the main story.
There is also exclusive use of slangs and swearing words throughout the book without any inhibition makes me wonder that is it common among the Delhites to speak in such a way or author deliberately used such words just to appear cool. Whatever the reason it left a sour taste. I am not sure if such languages is allowed in Indian households or used so habitually in late 80’s.
Again The Thakur’s looked quite advanced of their time. Like they approved intercaste marriage, allowed younger daughter to wear shorts, eldest daughter was openly flirtatious and was even planning to separate from her husband. All these were just normal issues in the book whereas in real life could create quite a havoc.
Something which irritated me throughout the novel were the nicknames used by the author for almost all the characters. It became difficult to know whether new character has been introduced or it’s the same character but different name. In fact characters have more than one nickname.
Even more irritating was to identify whether the character is speaking to himself/herself or to the other person. I think the best would have been to write chapters from various characters point of view.
The Verdict
It could have been a not-to-miss novel, had Anuja kept the junkie out from the family drama or hammered more substance into the sub plot stories.
It is a good story. There is a lot of family drama in it but it’s badly plotted hence was not able to enjoy reading it to the fullest.
