Book review: 'No Deadline For Love

Book: No Deadline For Love
Manasi Vaidya
Penguin
177 pages
Rs150

Confused small-town girl meets boy at work. They hate each other’s guts and fight publicly and constantly. She later develops a “humungous crush on him” and he, in turn, admits to feelings for her. They live happily ever after. Well, not entirely happily. Their relationship is marked by fireworks.

Megha Pandit, a 26-year-old brand manager at a major FMCG company in Mumbai is a “confused, screwed-up, impulsive misfit who never thought before she spoke”. She finds she is more turned on by the creative process of making an ad film than by putting together market strategies for the product promoted in the film. But the agency’s creative head doesn’t like brand managers getting involved in conceptualising ads.

This creative head, Yudi (short for Yudhistir Joshi), is “drop-dead gorgeous, with a glamorous girlfriend and a slew of award-winning work to his credit”. He seems to hate Megha’s guts, telling her to get off the creative process every chance he gets. But Megha, who’s finally found something to be happy about at work, refuses to back down. Sparks fly. Yudi seems to bring out the worst in her.

Meanwhile, her boss, “Vile Varun”, is trying everything he can to make Megha look inadequate in front of his bosses. To top it all, Megha’s mother, “the Momster”, is emotionally blackmailing her into meeting NRIs for marriage. It is these characters and nicknames that make up the fun element of the story.

The first-person narrative — from Megha’s point of view — is almost like a diary entry, peppered with observations like “Vile Varun descended on my desk like the proverbial pall of gloom”, and “With his ash-smeared forehead and oiled hair, he looked as out of place in this conservative Delhi neighbourhood as an idli among aloo parathas”. And though the editing is loose, the book still makes for a quick, entertaining read.