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The Girl with the Golden Parasol
The novel is set in a small university town in Madhya Pradesh. Rahul, the protagonist who is a relatively poor low caste boy, is a student of anthropology but he switches over to the Hindi Department to be close to Anjali, the rich upper cast girl and the one with the golden parasol. Here he gets embroiled in a vicious caste war that threatens to consume his love and life. Their love story in the backdrop of issues like globalisation, etc. forms the mainstay of the novel. In the wake of widespread consumerism, the university also becomes a hotbed of corruption and licentiousness. There is an exodus of intellectuals and an influx of incompetent teachers who further vitiate the academic atmosphere by encouraging caste-based politics among students. Though the novel deals with multifarious problems pervading the country, it does not make for involved reading. Too many issues crowd the text leaving no space for an in-depth critical analysis for any one issue. The author does not engage with anything beyond a very sketchy level of explanation, leaving the reader in a kind of vacuum. For instance, a potent problem like casteism by itself could have been explored at length to give some depth to the novel. However, it has merely been glossed over at the surface level much like the superficial choice of words "golden parasol" in the title as opposed to the more humble and utilitarian ‘yellow umbrella.’ The novel also falters at the level of characterisation, a majority of the characters being flat with hardly any evolution at all. Even a central character like Anjali is not fleshed out convincingly. Besides, according to the author, the only tangible solution to all these problems is escapism. The lovers elope in the hope of a better future. Thematically, the novel is very relevant to the tumultuous times that we are living in. The author redeems the novel by depicting an authentic picture of university life. The plot too is fairly dexterously handled, but the novel, much like a Hindi film, becomes predictable after a point. So, if you ‘read’ a Bollywood film, this is the book for you.
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This
is a very ambitious novel because it touches upon a host of issues
plaguing our country, like communalism, globalisation, glocalisation,
caste-based university politics, moral degradation, corruption,
consumerism, the Naxalite movement. The novel also replicates a
Bollywood potboiler as it has a poor-boy-meets-rich-girl love story,
replete with a generous sprinkling of songs from Hindi films. It is much
like the present-day mall culture—everything under one roof.