Of teenage blues & first love

Andaleeb Wajid’s latest young adult novel Asmara’s Summer is a long, cool, fizzy drink of a read. There is an anxious grandmother, absent parents, nosy neighbours, mandatory girl pals, a brooding young man, and of course, Asmara herself, who at 17 finds life an irresistible adventure. One minute she is down and the next she is up, as she copes with what comes her way. Asmara’s summer turns out to be very eventful; she gets new clothes, she gets a nephew, and she gets kissed.

Young adult writing takes many routes to teenage self-realisation. In this genre, relatable adolescent characters are a must. Issues can be grave; it is the age-sensitive handling of these issues that successfully caters to young adult tastes. Divorce, death, disease, trauma, child custody, new school, not being popular... Young adult writers like Jacqueline Wilson easily transform crises situations in the context of fiction into what can be handled, faced and survived.

Wajid’s usual style is to create cosy chaos with endearing characters and a romance that makes its way somehow into the plot. All loose ends are tied up by the last page, all mysteries solved, and two hearts beat as one. Just like My Brother’s Wedding, in Asmara’s Summer too the protagonist is mischievous, bubbly, and definitely not conforming at all to the Ms Goody Two Shoes image everyone expects of her.

Asmara means a beautiful butterfly, and very much in keeping with this fluttery, here-there-and-everywhere image, she does wing about the place, not still for a minute. Instead of a foreign holiday, fate decrees she has to hole herself up in a downmarket part of town, live with her maternal grandparents, has to be off social media, and lie to friends about her whereabouts. Asmara’s upper-class lifestyle is soon replaced by fried sweets and polyester outfits. From wearing her usual shorts, she gets into pajamas to please her grandma, but the latter — still not pleased — only asks what about a dupatta? 

Asmara gets even by logging into hashtag heaven with borrowed wi-fi under the fake name of Jalebbi Bai. When her mom says don’t hobnob with the neighbours, Asmara thinks: “Too late, Mom, too late”, because by then she is in complete cahoots with the next-door siblings, well, the brother more than the sister. That’s love, first love.

There is a lot of Bengaluru in the book — Tannery Road, Shivaji Nagar — and fittingly, even a start-up, when Asmara helps her friend sell her zardozi embroidery online. A subtle class element layers the book when Asmara realises that AC or non-AC, shiny clothes or not, she can’t judge people, who are all the same everywhere in the end. Asmara’s Summer comes to its ‘aha’ moment when she realises: “I can’t escape who I am.” A turning point in her life is when she invites her friends over to where she lives and they all tuck into the biryani her grandma has made. 

The romance in the book is a charmer by itself, with Asmara now turning away from the hero in haughty mode and now chasing him, with hilarious moments ensuing until they walk into the sunset. This is a fun romp through a young girl’s life, a life she lives very passionately, making a summer out of what could have been the winter of her teen years.

Asmara’s Summer
Andaleeb Wajid
Penguin2016,
pp 232
Rs. 132