Title: Pyjamas are Forgiving
Author: Twinkle Khanna
Publisher: Juggernaut Books
ISBN: 978-9386228970
Genre: Fiction, Humour
Pages: 256
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4 stars
I normally do not read “celebrity books”. However, this isn’t the first time Twinkle Khanna has written a book, so to me she is just a regular author than a celebrity author and thank God for that! She has the craft, she knows how to tell a story, and be funny at that – not the laugh-out-loud kind of funny, but sure the chuckle kind of funny, the funny that leaves this smile on your face – also the one that you will not forget anytime soon.
I will also literally kill the next person who asks me what the title means. Read the book if you’d like to know that. The book takes place in the sanctuary of an Ayurvedic retreat in Kerala. Anshu tries to heal herself in the wake of a divorce and believes that things will become alright once the doshas are fixed, so to say. But of course, there is more to this than meets the eye. There is love that is clearly not quite lost, once her ex-husband Jay arrives at the same retreat with his younger, trophy wife, Shalini in tow. To add to this, there are other characters that enter the plot and those only make it richer, funnier, and quite a rollicking read.
Pyjamas are Forgiving is the kind of book you take to the beach, to the pool, or lay in bed all day and finish it with your favourite reading snacks. It is the right dose of funny and some contemplation on what relationships really are. What I love about this book is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously, just like life must not be for most part. Twinkle’s characters are expressive, they say what they must, they are most human, and stumble and fall like any of us.
Anshu is the kind of person who seems all so powerful and could also be putty in Jay’s hands. She is the kind of woman who knows what is her worth and will also doubt her capabilities most of the time. Then there is the gay couple, Javed and Anil that I loved. What I think resonated right till the end of the book is that they didn’t seem out of place in the narrative, which usually happens when LGBTQIA characters aren’t protagonists. This to me is a great start when it comes to Indian Writing in English, in the popular segment (so to say, hate saying that). Javed and Ali aren’t caricaturesque and that to me was simply great.
Twinkle Khanna never loses sight of the Shanthamaaya spa (this is but obviously a major character) and the oddballs who work there – the Ayurvedic doctors, the ghee routines that make you vomit, the hilarious situations (when Anshu realizes in one chapter that men in the adjoining spa therapy room can see her in the buff), the forbidden foods and of course the strict no-no when it comes to sex, everything comes together very neatly. Also, a little later in the review, however, I absolutely loved Anshu’s Mummy and her sister, Mandira.
There are range of emotions in the book, sometimes as sudden as one sentence to another and somehow as a reader, I did not have a problem with this kind of writing at all. If anything, I thought it was cleverly done. Twinkle Khanna makes no bones about writing the way she does – it is intelligent, funny, and even warm and quite emotional in some places. I loved how there is no redemption or the “perfect end” that ties the novel without any hiccups. Like I said earlier, these are regular people with regular problems and problems don’t just vanish in thin air at the end of the novel. Pyjamas are Forgiving is witty, sometimes poignant even, and just the kind of book that Ayurvedic doctor recommended.
Title: Baking with Kafka
Of Books and Reading 