Of dilemmas & dreams of breaking free from convention
An epistolary novel, Keep the Change is a close encounter with the vulnerability of young women who dream of change but are ill-equipped to let go of ideals and principles they have grown up with.
Keep the change
Nirupama Subramanian
HarperCollins, 2010, pp 358, Rs 199
This is a sure-fire ticket to a world we are more than familiar with. A world peopled by pretentious and obnoxious characters alongside the naive and the good-at-heart. And it doesn’t take long for Damayanthi, the protagonist of Keep the Change, to comprehend this.
It all begins when she’s 26 and realises that she hates everything about her existence — the uncoolness of her name, her job at SSV & Sons, the ‘girl-seeing’ ceremony she has to be a part of every now and then, her address that reads 32, Amman Kovil Street, and the fact that she hasn’t done anything silly as yet.
This CA rank-holder who smuggles home a copy of Cosmopolitan and watches Sex and the City after her parents have retired for the day fears becoming an ossified fossil in Amman Kovil Street. She longs to fly the nest, away from the prying eyes of her parents and their constant hunt for a ‘good’ Tam-Brahm son-in-law. Armed with her infectious enthusiasm for life and her desire to break free, she embarks on her journey into the corporate world as she lands a job in First Global and moves to Mumbai.
Adventurous at heart, Damayanthi enjoys every bit of her experience at First Global even though she has to deal with tough horses like CG and Harish who look down upon starters as lacking in intellect. Fortunately for her, she finds a good friend in Jimmy, her senior by just a week. Together, they try to crack the corporate world code of lies, deceit and one-upmanship.
Though in the big, bad city of Mumbai and in the swanky office of First Global, Damayanthi is yet to find her ‘man’, the tall, dark and handsome hunk, straight out of the many Mills & Boons she had read and fantasised about. Enter the good-looking Rahul and Ms D’s eyes pop out. Her life, to put it mildly, changes utterly. She undergoes a total makeover. The same old B Damayanthi who reviled beautification products as ‘chemical products that demeaned our self-esteem and promoted the evil agenda of MNCs’, builds up her make-up kit. She longs to get bold with Rahul. The values imbued at home caution her to be good but her inner voice tries to convince her that there’s no harm in having some ‘real’ fun. Even as she finds herself in a cauldron of conflicting emotions, she’s put on a project that is termed a ‘loser’ by the rest of First Global. She fumbles through her first presentation but soon learns the ways of the corporate world, teams up with Jimmy and comes out trumps.
Just as she is basking in the glory of her new-found success on both personal and professional fronts, she receives a severe jolt — Rahul is a womanizer who is bedding her pencil-thin, stylish and snobbish roommate Sonya Sood! Our poor li’l Ms D is devastated. To add to her woes, her boss Harish claims all the credit for the success of her project. Sick of First Global and the rest of the world, she rushes back home, happy to be in the protective care of her parents and almost decides to marry a ‘well-settled’ Tam-Brahm divorcee ‘boy’ in California, as per her parents’ wishes. Just then, she gets a lucrative offer from First Global to work on a soul-satisfying project and D is again caught in a dilemma... Will she keep the change or decide to be content being a housewife in California?
An epistolary novel, Keep the Change is a close encounter with the vulnerability of young women who dream of change but are ill-equipped to let go of ideals and principles they have grown up with. It’s an experience most of us have gone through. No wonder, the subject of the book is intensely appealing. This is a story simply told. But then, it is highly predictable too, almost like a spicy Bollywood flick. Nonetheless, it is a page-turner. So, nip your doubts, fasten your seat belts and allow D to take over your Sunday afternoon.
