Weight Loss
Upamanyu Chatterjee
Penguin India
Rs 495
Weight Loss isn't really about losing weight. But the main character, Bhola, is obsessed with the idea, both physically and mentally (I think what non-obsessive types call junking excess baggage).
Bhola is a tortured character. He's obsessed with sex (though author Upamanyu Chatterjee feels that he's not "more obsessed with sex than a normal person"). And Bhola's pretty much lost the plot in life, before even getting started.
"In Bhola's case, fundamentally, you're intrigued all the time by lives gone awry, people who have missed the bus. It's just the sense of a wasted life," says the author.
"Sexual and spiritual degradation, which is how the back cover sells the book, is actually quite accurate, it sums up the book," Chatterjee said, adding, "The two are linked here too, if you don't have moorings in your religion or don't have particularly strong family connection then chances of slipping away are much higher."
That, in effect, is what happens to Bhola. But do read the book to get a fix on what actually goes wrong with him, his best friend Dosto, his wife Anin, her sister and Bhola's wife Kamala, and Bhola's objects of affection Titli and Moti.
He's attracted to both of them and has a relationship with both, and even his fat aunty of a landlady.
By the end of it, despite all the convolutions (and all the graphic sex scenes) you end up feeling for the guy.
The ending is disturbing, but it couldn't very well be a biting social commentary with Upamanyu's trademark black humour and then have a happy ending, now could it?
The book is nothing if not intense. Read it, but be prepared to be grossed out.
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