What happens when two states meet Judy?

When she saw Drink, Play, F@ck, the parody of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, she thought it was a cool idea. And when she found out that the author of the parody had managed to sell film rights to his book, the excitement grew. “He was just ripping off from someone else’s best selling plot,” exclaims Judy Balan, the author of Two Fates: The Story of my Divorce, in near disbelief. She went on to write a blog post on how she thought it would be a good idea to write a parody of Chetan Bhagat’s Two States. “I was kidding, but I got so many comments and responses that I eventually wrote a prologue and circulated it among my friends,” explains the young divorcee. “I even gave away the title in the blog post,” she adds sheepishly.When everyone who read her foreword thought that it was funny, she went ahead and breezed through the book in a matter of three months. “I wrote the book just to see if I could complete writing a book. Now, that I’ve written the first one, I’ve already signed on my next book,” says Judy.And just when someone is getting excited at the thought of reading a parody of Two States, Judy is quick to clarify. “The focus is not on Two States at all; the parody is just a sub-plot. If you’ve read Two States, you’ll get all the jokes, though,” she says. Judy, however, clarifies that the parody is merely for her amusement. She empahsises, “I’m definitely not one of those Chetan Bhagat haters. I don’t love him either and I won’t comment on his writing.”On more about Two Fates, which recently hit the stands in the bookstores in the city, she says, “Chetan says in his book that it is difficult for a couple to get married in middle-class India, but I think that it is far more difficult to get divorced because it is something that the entire society protests.” Despite the rocketing divorce rates, it is something that will always have a stigma attached to it, Judy feels. “I’ve had three years away from the whole thing, so I can now see the humour in the situation,” she explains.It is easy to assume that the story is an autobiography of sorts, but Judy corrects, “It is nothing like my life. In fact, it's quite the opposite.” Two Fates does have the lead man from IIT and the girl from Stella Maris, and apart from the funny North India-South India squabbles between the couple, the book focuses on Indianisms. “It is about the aunties and uncles who are constantly on your case. For them, it is a problem if you are married or if you are not, and then, there is the whole baby’s issue,” she says. “But divorce is the icing on the cake,” she adds.