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A Bachelor Boy is an unbridled and unabashed tribute to bachelors-by-chance. The author makes no bones about the protagonist, U, enjoying himself to the hilt in the absence of his wife and kid. The sassily written introduction makes for a good start. Having been associated with The National Herald, The Economic Times, The Financial Express and The Statesman, the writer certainly has an impressive way with words. The story is a just an excuse to string together U’s numerous escapades. And he does it rather well. The book opens to U, the protagonist, picking his nose and his wife and kid picking on him in turn. It is followed by the recreation of a domestic scene that can be straight out of anyone’s house. It actually picks up only after the wife and kid are out of the way. Then he comes out in his true voyeuristic self. His obsession with his domestic helpers sees a few of them run away, others are sent off by his infuriated wife. For him life is indeed a whistle, for in his own words: "It is not often that a married bachelor wakes up to the sight of a woman, not his wife, in his room." Nothing could give him a bigger high than seeing a woman at the dressing table, helping herself to his wife’s make-up. His severe case of roving eye seems to settle at nothing less than a bunch at a time making one wonder if there is some polygamous gene at work. His job as a journalist, if it means anything at all, is at its best a place to pick up girls. The book captures the fantasy of the adulterous romance in the pre-cell phone era. Even though the Internet and cell phones hog the bastion of adultery in modern times, the essence is the same and the author misses none of it. The writer’s pre-occupation with calling everyone by their initials and naming females as sex objects does seem a bit over the top at times. He is not wrong in suggesting "Ruminations on a Maid" as a title and which in fact would have been apt and telling. He stereotypes everything and everybody, the secretary has an affair with the boss, the wife returns on the day of his wildest caper, even his mother is as men think their mothers are—nosey and very stubborn. As the editor of the
fictitious newspaper that he works for says, this book is a literary
adulation to the proud proclamation, "Oh, I am a male chauvinist
pig."
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Boys will be boys, and
married bachelors can be really bad boys. The kind whose wife is away
and which gives the naughty ‘mouse’ a chance to play. When we are
unattached and free of responsibilities that tie us, we hanker for that
stability and once we are in it, we panic and do the strangest of things
at the slightest of opportunities. And when you are a man who has just
been freed from the shackles of matrimony, albeit temporarily, you are
all too ready to play the field. Stray flashbacks about the unwitting
wife serve only as an impetus and constant reminder to enjoy it while it
lasts.