Email
Print
ShareHow writer, Anita Jain, dated India, and lived to tell the tale.
One measure of a country's growth is the number of books being written about it. As a billion-people economy motors at over eight per cent, the India "success story" is a hot genre and the range is widening, from scholarly works like former Economist editor Bill Emmott's Rivals, comparing India and China, to something breezy like former Financial Times journalist Anita Jain's Marrying Anita, which explores the evolving youth culture in the new India.
It seems odd to categorise Marrying Anita like that, because of its chick lit flavour, starting out with a lament about New York's dating scene, where half the women like her -- Harvard-educated, single, mid-thirties -- spend their evenings fixated with finding a mate. Maybe her mother was better off with her arranged route to a happy marriage, she wrote in an article. This landed her a book contract, which prompted her to relocate to New Delhi and become a serial dater of young men, but that's where the chick lit ends and journalism takes over.
For one, she mostly targets migrants "from towns like Kanpur and Gorakhpur whom the girls from established families in Delhi wouldn't think of dating". It's not clear how deeply involved she got in the ups and downs of these relationships, and whether they touched her mind more than her heart. Going out on a date in search of a committed relationship is different from going out with somebody to profile in a book.
The book comes more into its own when it attempts to chronicle urban culture. "More than half the population is below 30, which is a staggering statistic. I didn't really see this new India being represented in books. I felt it was important to do that, but in an entertaining, anecdotal way," she admits. "So, although I did try to get married, maybe I didn't try hard enough."
She brings an American frankness to the discussion about youth culture in a country where "people don't really like to be honest [about their personal lives]". But this kind of candour from an American woman with Indian roots still has predictable consequences, like the prurient curiosity of a Hindi channel and the shock and awe of uncles and aunties from her extended family here who called in during the live interview -- that focused entirely on the sexual content of the book. "The book's not about sex," she tried to explain to them. Her mother has been more understanding: "All the girls are doing it; you're just writing about it."
Whether chick lit or journalism, the book seems to have taken on a life of its own, with her at the centre of it. "Many mornings I wake up and wonder, what have I done? You can't go back from here."
One thing's for sure. Now that the book is written, she's "no longer actively looking for dates", although when I met her she was chuffed at an e-mail she had just received from "a big-time entrepreneur". She's also eyeing the big Bollywood deal, which is what brought her to Mumbai. So all those small town suitors she dated in Delhi can eat their hearts out.
