Pyjamas are Forgiving By Twinkle Khanna
I liked the metamorphic meaning of title which says be like a pyjama i.e. forgiving in nature, unlike jeans which hold the grudge.
Other than the title, the story doesn’t reciprocate this metamorphic meaning as being forgiving in nature doesn’t mean don’t stand up for yourself whereas this story was about was all about how Anshu got persuaded every time by Jay.
As I started reading, Anshu, the protagonist character of this book, was coming across as a strong opinion-oriented woman, standing up not only for herself but for others too. However, until I reached the end of the book, Anshu came out as a person who could be easily brainwashed and was without any strong opinion of hers.
Storyline goes as:
Anshu, a divorced woman in her forties, used to visit ‘Shanthamaaya Sthalam’ (an Ayurveda Therapeutic and Spa Centre) every six months or so. But, this time during her stay at Shanthamaaya, her ex-husband, Jay also came there with his current wife, Shalini and his cousin, Lalit.
As human nature, it’s expected to get emotionally stressed out when you see your ex, after 7 long years, happy and content with his new wife, so was Anshu. But instead of regaining her composure, she started falling for him again (irrespective of what all he had done to her in the past) and they started an affair (which she was even expecting to continue outside Shanthamaaya). Not only this, Jay was successful in emotionally persuading Anshu to get in bed with her.
On another side, Jenna, a young wild girl who had also visited Shanthamaaya fell for Lalit's charms but was later harassed by him. When Jenna confessed all this to Anshu, she told everything to Jay and in turn, Jay convinced her again that nothing of this sort happened and that Jenna herself wanted to get intimate with Lalit. And then later one night, when Anshu was approaching towards Jenna's room, Anshu saw that Jenna was trying to escape Lalit and was running towards her, and had an accidental fall. Jenna was then taken to the hospital while Jay, meanwhile, manipulated Anshu's mind and convinced her not to tell anything to police or file a case against Lalit as this would drag him also in this. Jay blackmailed Anshu emotionally that if she would tell the truth to the police then the second chance for them to be together would also get ruined.
Characters introduced were many like Anil and Javed, a homosexual couple; Vivaan almost a decade younger than Anshu and suffering from cancer, fell for her and respected her a lot; Madhu one practical lady who came with a Babaji; Dr. Menon, head of Shanthamaaya, but nothing much has been discussed about these characters in the story.
It started off well but after 60 pages or so, I started losing interest the way Anshu’s character built up and other strong characters were completely sidelined and then none the less, I found the end incomplete. I was waiting to find out what Jenna did after she regained consciousness, did she file a case against Lalit or did she confront him, I was waiting what happened to Jay and Anshu outside Shanthamaaya. It would have been interesting if Anshu would have confronted Shalini about Jay’s real character, and Jenna and Anshu would have filed a police complaint against Lalit for manhandling Jenna. At the same time, I was expecting more from Vivaan’s character. And I was looking for the story behind why Madhu came with a Babaji.
The book has Twinkle’s writing essence as it was witty at places. I liked Anshu’s mother character who came across 'I don't give it a damn' kinda woman, and Dr. Menon’s character who came across as a wise, composed and intelligent man. I liked what Dr. Menon said to Anshu when he was explaining her the reality of life:
‘Loss doesn’t just disappear. We have to work to replace it with hard-won emotional accomplishments or it turns into our greatest adversaries, despair and fear.’
Also, I liked the bond portrayed between Anshu and her sister in the book. It's so true what Anshu said:
‘Only sisters can hurl around nuclear weapons at each other and come out unscathed.’
Overall, the story is good for a Bollywood masala movie and nothing more than that.
It’s not the best writing of Twinkle. It was not a page-turner book for me unlike ‘Mrs. Funny Bones’ or ‘The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad’. Due to the lack of quality content and so many loopholes and missing links in the story, it didn’t strike the chord.
If you have read Twinkle Khanna’s earlier books and have been following her blogs regularly, you may not find this book at par with those, as her earlier books and blogs had set her writing bar so high.
Please click on the below link to get a grasp of how ‘the legend of Lakshmi Prasad’ was:
https://bookreviewsbyricha.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-legend-of-lakshmi-prasad-book-review.html
Lines which I liked the most:
- Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
- A joke is only amusing because it has a kernel of truth in it.
- The mind knows it deserves better; it is the heart that forgets.
- If we bury things without truly addressing them, they will keep calling us again and again.
- An allegory of life, sometimes there is a crown on your head, sometimes a crow about to defecate.
- Love cannot exist without its conjoined twin, heartbreak.
- God, love, time are all invisible, and yet they define our entire existence.
- There is no such thing as complete fulfillment.
- Blame is a bullet that the world fires at an already wounded victim.
- Sometimes the only thing we have left is hope. Hope that every tomorrow hurts a little less than yesterday.
- If you keep turning and looking behind, all you will get is your old pain in the neck back.
Rating: 2/5