BANGALORE: Deepali Junjappa’s first novel The Twisted Twenties is the tale of a youngster who wants to taste life as it comes and not be bogged down by traditions and the usual parental expectations and recriminations. The protagonist, Mimi Hittalmani realises that the twenties are indeed twisted and therefore, it is perfectly acceptable to goof up, jump courses, change careers, flout opinions and of course, chat up four guys at once.
The story itself is really about a confused twenty-something navigating the million options that life has to offer.
The author writes, “As Baz Lurhman once said ‘The most interesting people are the ones who still don’t know what they want to do.’ It’s okay to be confused in your twenties. It’s okay to not know. Ok Peeps, why don’t we get straight to the point. Do we really know what we want in our twenties? Yes and No. Are we confused? The hell we are.”
The young author elucidates issues that torment and afflict the Facebook and Whatsapp generation.
Mimi Hittalmani who is neither interested in IIT or MIT, takes up literature, then plunges into animation and graphics and feels that life has just started when she lands in Delhi and Mumbai. Here too she ends up in problems when she is kicked out of her job as a reporter with Youth Weekly by her editor for attending a silly Bollywood bash.
Depressed after this incident, and a nasty breakup with her boyfriend, Mimi decides to expand her worldview.
She spends the next two years studying creative writing in Sydney and enjoying the freedom as well as getting over her boyfriend.
Now armed with a foreign degree and some flashy Aussie stories, she begins her adventures in Mumbai where she meets the gorgeous Mehra brothers and falls in love with all the three brothers at once.
She is on a different planet altogether as she joins the carnival and let’s herself go on the train of chaos, cacophony and drama.
From then on the joy of working, flirting, schmoozing, networking, and finally falling in love becomes part of Mimi’s quirky and hilarious journey.
At the end of the book, the author has also included a tongue-in-cheek manual on how to survive the twenties. Although twenties itself denotes that the manual is not to be taken seriously but still it is roughly a guide for people who are perennially confused.
An interesting book, The Twisted Twenties is readable for those in their twenties, as they will easily identify with many characters, happenings and events.