My So-Called Bollywood Life

Winnie Mehta is a Bollywood film addict, educated in the genre by her father. Her greatest ambition is to study South Asian Film Theory at New York University’s prestigious film school and she is doing everything she can to make her application look first class. This includes co-chairing her college’s film festival with her ex-boyfriend, whose relationship with her was to lead to marriage, if her family’s astrologer’s prediction was to be believed.

Then complications pile on complications as another ex-boyfriend appears on the scene, her dreams re-enact parts of old Bollywood movies which are eerily relevant to her own problems, Winnie loses the co-chair of the festival and all this against a continuous background of references to Bollywood films.

Although this is ostensibly a romance, it is also for readers who are interested in and knowledgeable about South Asian films. There is a section at the back of the book explaining the movies in general and providing suggestions for further viewing. This theme has equal footing with the romantic elements and, indeed, often illuminates and comments on them. There is a good deal of illustration of Hindu family life, too and this is an appealing part of the novel, introducing some larger-than-life women and information about the rituals which are staged within the home.

There is, of course, a happy ending-which book in love with Bollywood could have it any other way?