cub reads. Life’s like this

What is one of Bollywood’s favourite movie plots? Think Ram aur Shyam , Seeta aur Geeta , Chaalbaaz ... Twins separated at birth; one grows up rich and cultured, and the other poor but street smart. Sowmya Rajendran and Niveditha Subramaniam’s hilarious graphic novel is a retelling of the classic Bollywood tale, yet it is also a universal story of the geeky girl-next-door. With a blurb that reads ‘Why isn’t life like the movies? For that matter, why aren’t movies like your life’, Nirmala and Normala is the story of twins separated at birth. Nirmala is adopted by famous movie director GVM (he doesn’t remember his full name anymore) and Normala is raised ‘normally’ by nuns. Nirmala blossoms into a charming, sensitive and empty-headed beauty — perfect movie star material like Hema Malini and Sridevi. Normala grows into an awkward adult, armed with insecurities and sarcasm just like the Tina Feys and Mindy Kalings of our imperfect world.

Like all Bollywood plots, Nirmala and Normala’s story is really about finding love. On a rainy day, Nirmala goes to college in a cotton sari, her hair loose, sans umbrella. She helps a beggar woman cross the road, kisses a blind schoolboy, and stops traffic with her beauty and kindness. Stalker-hero Rahul falls in love on the spot. As the narrator puts it, “It was a truth universally acknowledged that if a young woman collided with a young man, especially in the rain, they must fall in love.”

Across town, Normala too takes the bus, toting her grandfather umbrella, hair tied, sporting an old T-shirt. Despite her plainness, stalker-hero No. 2 Varun is smitten. He follows her around, throws a few pickup lines. As both stalker-heroes decide to jump off a bridge to prove their love, Nirmala cries for hers while Normala moves on to hero No. 3 Roobesh Kumar. After more Bollywood-type plot twists, which involve evoking My Name is Khan , an underworld Don, accidents and hospitals, Nirmala and Normala find true love.

The authors’ story has a wafer-thin plot; there’s nothing in the story you haven’t seen before (in a YRF film). But the dialogue is crackling, the humour self-deprecating and the illustrations, comical. For instance, when Normala discusses Roobesh with roommate Aditi, she says cattily, “(He likes) Paris je t’aime. But he said Paris, not Pari.”

The twins’ travails are told consecutively; Nirmala’s larger-than-life stories juxtaposed with Normala’s funny everyday encounters. In the superb illustrations, Normala has a sarcastic mouth and Nirmala has dreamy eyes. The former is the quintessential bahu — cooking up a storm in olive oil; the latter is a typical pseudo-feminist who feels powerful after applying kajal.

Through Normala’s story, we realise that many of our lives might not imitate YRF plots but ‘normal’ lives can be just as melodramatic, funny and movie-like. Life’s like that.

Mathangi Subramanian’s debut novel Dear Mrs Naidu is a heartwarming story centred around the Right to Education Act (RTE). Never didactic, it tells of 12-year-old Sarojini, and her friends Amir and Deepti.

In August 2009, India became one of 135 countries in the world to provide free and compulsory education to children between the ages of six and 14 when the Parliament passed the RTE. Dear Mrs Naidu , shows how five years on, not much has changed on the ground. The government and schools struggle to implement a fundamental right. And that sometimes, all it takes is a handful of students to get the system working.

From June to September 2013, young Sarojini writes letters to her namesake Dr Sarojini Naidu, documenting life in her neighbourhood. At first, the letters are just a school project. She talks about her best friend Amir, Amma, her home in the coconut grove wedged between shopping malls and her school. Soon, life takes a different turn. Amir moves out of their jhuggi-jhopdi cluster into a block of flats. He leaves their government school for the posh private Greenhill school. A distraught Sarojini has to hatch a plan to either join her BFF at the posh school or get him back. With the help of a few friends — Deepti, a sullen and sarcastic 13-year-old, ‘evil genius’ Vimala Madam, the neighbourhood aunty galata and RTE — Sarojini manages to get her happy ending.

Sarojini is a bit like Scout Finch and a bit like her namesake. Curious and plucky, the 12-year-old is witty, a detective-fiction fan, budding lawyer and a compulsive listicle-maker. Subramanian doesn’t paint a ‘just-and-beautiful-world’ picture of the lives of the economically weaker sections. Her characters are real; the aunty galata is so hilariously told that you will be transported to a colony full of aunties bickering and gossiping. The author dwells on caste- and class-based discrimination and attitudes of officials with wisdom and humour.

She also tells us an important lesson — how little we know about the provisions of the RTE Act, that the law is always on our (children’s) side. In four months, Sarojini forms a School Development Management Committee, talks to Block Education Officers, prepares a budget and raises funds to repair her school.

While Dear Mrs Naidu is a fictitious account of Ambedkar School in Bengaluru, like Kate Darnton’s The Misfits , it resembles real life. Half a decade later, it is sad to see that we have more Greenhill schools and not enough Sarojinis, Deeptis and Vimala Madams.

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