Blame it on Bridget, really. Ever since the world became privy to the personal diaries of this chubby, soulmate-searching working woman, it set off a whole new genre in fiction—books written of women, by women, for women. Helen Fielding’s scatty singleton surrounded by Smug Marrieds made a dazzling debut in 1996, followed by Sophie Kinsella’s Confessions of a Shopaholic four years later. In less than a decade, a million Bridgets and Beckys had been spawned across the globe. Chick lit, as it came to be officially recognised, had triumphantly ventured out of Britannia and colonised the world.
In America, Candace Bushnell’s sassy singles of Sex and the City peep-toed onto bestseller lists. Close on its high heels came Lauren Weisberger’s The Devil Wears Prada. Soon, painted fingernails were flying off keyboards and landing plum on to bookshelves across the country. From African American to Latin American to Asian American chick lit, the brave new world was witnessing a brave new outpouring. Eastern European eves, too, have let off some serious steam, and today, bookstores everywhere are crammed with candy-coloured novels that speak of Everywoman in everyday life. Love, longing, marriage, motherhood, work and wardrobe woes—these books are chatty, catty and chic on everything under the sun.
In India, Swati Kaushal’s Piece of Cake (Penguin, 2006) about an almost-30, almost 6 ft, single working girl, first whipped up the dough for a home-bake. The icing came a few months later with Advaita Kala’s Almost Single (HarperCollins) about a savvy, sexy woman caught between old values and new ways. This was cherry-topped by Rajashree’s Trust Me (Rupa) that rushed for reprint in the first month itself. Rajashree’s blurb that offered the insight: “All men are bastards…” may well have contributed to the soaring sales.
It’s been pretty much of a cakewalk for Indian chick lit ever since, with desi Bridgets popping up all over the place. In a sari with sneakers, like on Kala’s cover, or as Kasturi from Ruchita Misra’s The (In)eligible Bachelors, who has an MBA and a plum job but—as her mother will tell you with a sob—no husband!
Does this mean Indian chick lit is all grown up now? Is it ready to move out and live all by itself in the big bad bookshelves out there? Looks like it. Misra’s The (In)eligible Bachelors not only sold 4,000 copies in the first month itself, it is perched above Kinsella’s Mini Shopaholic in The Hindu’s 2011 bestseller list.
The figures tell you the story. Almost Single sold 10,000 copies in the first four months and Trust Me went hot-caking at 25,000 copies in the very first month and is currently into its 19th reprint. In the last six months at Crossword bookstore, Almost Single sold 1,000 copies, Bombay Duck is a Fish (Westland and Tranquebar Press) by Kanika Dhillon sold 900 copies while Anuja Chauhan’s The Zoya Factor and Battle for Bittora (HarperCollins) sold 1,000 and 400 copies respectively.
Landmark bookstores record Rekha Waheed’s two-in-one My Bollywood Wedding and Saris and the City (Little Black Dress, 2010) on its Top 5 bestselling list. Oxford Bookstore says it has registered an increase of 19 per cent in this genre in the past few months. Here, Madhuri Banerjee’s Losing My Virginity and Other Dumb Ideas (Penguin) is a grosser, as is Preeti Shenoy’s Bubblegum and Candies (Shrishti).
Publishers, too, are relishing the reads. Kapish Mehra, publisher of Rupa & Co, says chick lit writers from his publishing house are penning serious profits—Varsha Dixit’s Right Fit Wrong Shoe published a-year-and-a-half ago sold 45,000 copies, Tishaa’s Pink or Black sold a lakh copies in a year and Rashmi Kumar’s Stilettos in the Newsroom sold 15,000 copies.
Indian chick lit may vary in content from its Western sisterhood, but the concerns are pretty much the same. While young women are essentially the same everywhere in the world, we do have our own special problems. Sex, booze and boyfriends are not as big a deal as virginity, arranged marriage and interfering parents. “When I shifted to London after marriage, the experience of boy-hunt was still fresh in my mind. I found that a lot of friends around me were going through the same experience,” recalls Misra.
Rajashree feels that though the genre was born in the West, it is being bred with great success in India because these are stories that urban Indian women can relate to. “There’s a lot of energy in Indian chick lit, a whole new tang and freshness,” she says. Homegrown chick lit also has a distinct desi feel, adapting itself to local flavours—Rajashree’s book was set in Bollywood while Anuja Chauhan took it to the cricket field and the sweltering Indian election grounds.
For writer Mridula Koshy, it’s an entertaining storyline that attracts the readers to this genre, although “its bubblegum pink covers and blinged out cartoon women” are also attractive. She says, “Chick lit satisfies reader interest in fast-paced stories centering around the everyday life experiences of girls and women. The best chick lit engages reader intelligence through the hook of a good story, some of it is even mildly satirical. The Nanny Diaries are a great example of chick lit that remain fun even as they skewer a particular segment of society—the Park Avenue mother.”
Almost Single does just that. In the novel, a mother bemoans her bad karma because her 29-year-old daughter is still single. “A generation ago, marriage was the only way to escape parental control,” says Kala. “Now women are working, living alone in cities, hanging out with women friends, drinking, dating and having fun in spite of the enormous social pressure to get married. They inhabit a world where women enjoying a drink in the bar are not social
outcasts. They are not tragic figures because they are single.”
The sanguine natures of its characters and happy endings may have typecast this genre as jejune and anti-feminist, something that many writers and publishers are uncomfortable with. It is only recently that this genre has been sighted in India, so it will take a while for it to settle down and take a bow. Says writer Shinie Antony, “I think critics are divided over what makes up chick lit. Some chick lit writers themselves disown the label.”
Samhita Arni, whose Sita’s Ramayana developed in collaboration with patua artist Moyna Chitrakar and published by Tara Books in July was on the NYT Bestseller List for Graphic Novels, agrees that “when we talk about chick lit, the term is often derogatory”. She says: “If you look at a writer like Bushnell, she isn’t considered a serious writer. But she should be—she writes with verve and style, and some of her work, recalls (for me) the writing of Edith Wharton and Henry James. She also explores a lot of the problems of women, the idea of feminism and how it’s often hard to realise, or enjoy all the freedoms that feminism presents us with. Marian Keyes, in The Charming Man, is insightful, penetrating and nuanced in her portrayal of abusive relationships.”
Writer Tishani Doshi sees it as a question of individual perception. “I think the problem with the whole issue for me is the division of categories. It presumes that chick lit cannot be feminist, which is a false assumption.” She adds, “Certainly, someone like Bushnell, whom I spent time with at the Jaipur and Galle Literary festivals, who is considered the queen of chick lit, considers herself a feminist writer. I think Naipaul would argue that Jane Austen wrote chick lit.”
For Koshy, its sway on the popular culture has helped spread women’s stories. “Women and their stories have not had the same hold on popular culture in the past as they do now. Chick lit has played a role in bringing women’s stories into the literary mainstream. It would be silly to critique chick lit for what it does not do. Yes, it is primarily interested in entertainment. More power to that goal, I say. Others can tackle goals like edification and experimentation.”
It is clear that chick lit has arrived and caught on with the reading public. As for its pink satin bow and breathless titles, that is only window dressing perhaps to lure those who underestimate the power of this genre. But publishers too are wary of the negative connotations. “When one says chick lit, it’s becoming a term synonymous with poor writing, which I think is not true,” clarifies V K Karthika of HarperCollins. “I think there has been very intelligent, sparky writing that talks to women in a way that other writings don’t. Most of the time they are funny, they take aspects of female life that are not taken very seriously by high-brow literature and play on it. So, what you have is something that is funny and intelligent at the same time. So I would like to use the term commercial fiction that includes all kinds of mainstream writing.”
Publisher David Davidar of Aleph feels this genre has migrated from the West and will soon be followed by other fare. “This is the first wave of commercial novels that have come to the country. Mystery novels, Harry Potter-like sagas will follow soon.” To him the reason behind this obsession is simple. The first wave of Indian writers wrote for the international audience. While the current batch of writers write about their world, about people like themselves and for people who inhabit their world. The Indian writers and readers have both become very confident. “Now it does not matter if you have not published, or not read Spinoza. For example, look at the Hindi film industry. Nowhere in the world would you see such cinema, such stories, yet they thrive. For me the growth of commercial fiction is like the growth of Hindi cinema,” he says.
Meanwhile, like good Bollywood fare, chick lit remains synonymous with smileys for the soul. In typical chick lit plots, the main protagonist is initially unable to cope with the pressures of life and learns how to get along by and by. Not exactly ditsy, but well, a little off-track and snowed under. And then of course girl meets boy…
Karthika points out that the plots of the genre also differ. For example, Sex and the City cut through how people lived in a certain period in America. It talked about a glamorous bunch of poor and had a slightly escapist view of the world. At the same time there are books like The Vague Woman’s Handbook, which is about the first year of marriage of a couple and friendships outside the marriage. Karthika says, “It’s not Mills & Boon. It’s about people like you and me, who go on in their lives and are not taxed with miseries of life.”
She says, “A lot of books are about looking, searching... which is what a lot of literary fiction is about. In this it is not about the seriousness of the prose but about finding humour in the situation of being lonely. Very often it is tongue and cheek and tells you that it’s no big deal to be unmarried at 35.” Karthika feels that for the first time a genre is catering to an audience for whom there was not much writing before. And they are written in such a fun way that you don’t feel despondent about your life.
Like any other genre out there, chick lit too has its own battles to fight and market share to corner. Speaking in rupee terms, it would seem chick lit is already in the pink of health. While clucking up a storm among those who look down upon it, it is also bringing in big bucks. And that’s no fluff.
With inputs from Shweta Upadhyay
What Exactly is Chick Lit?
The term chick lit, first used in 1988, started as college slang for “female literary tradition”. The genre was defined as a type of second-wave feminism and
post-feminist writing that included themes that covered the entire range of female experiences including love, courtship and fashion.
So how does that differ from regular women’s fiction? As www.chicklit.com tells you—it’s all in the tone. Chick lit is told in a more confiding, personal tone. It’s like having a best friend tell you about her life. Or watching various characters go through things that you have gone through yourself, or witnessed
others going through. Humour is a strong point in chick lit, too. In fact, THAT is what really separates it from regular woman’s fiction.
The website also cautions you not to mistake mass-market sized romance novels for chick lit. Which means the Barbara Cartlands, the Harlequins and the Mills & Boons all fall under the Romance genre, not to be confused with chick lit.
Metrosexual Men and the Birth of Lad Lit
If baby is writing her heart out, can baba be far behind? We are talking about men writing of men for men. The jinxed romancer, the anti-hero, the forgetter of punch lines, boys who bawl... such are the lads of lad lit.
Chetan Bhagat is perhaps the Pied Piper of this sub-genre, especially with Two States, where the protagonist woos his wife-to-be under comic circumstances.
Tuhin Sinha’s That Thing Called Love, Tushar Raheja’s Anything for You, Ma’am, and Abhijit Bhaduri’s Married but Available ladled up more lad lit along the way.
Then came Resident Dormitus by Vikas Rathi, I Never Thought I Could Fall in Love by Charandeep Singh Sandhu, Zero Percentile by Neeraj Chibba and But Then What Happened to Ravin by Ravinder Singh. And the latest, The Nothing Man by Ajay Khullar, presents Baru, a self-confessed bastard.
Lad lit is too new a trend to stand trade analysis. But one thing is certain, the success of chick lit acts as muse and commercial model to it. This apple Adam is biting.
