Bindis and Brides, by Nisha Minhas

Ok so my subtitle could have been more imaginative. Sorry - I couldn't get more inspired. Possibly like the writer of this book, Nisha Minhas, who seemed to be lacking in inspiration in general when it came to her leading female character.

~WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?~

A 28 year old Indian woman, Zarleena Shankar, runs a bridal wear shop with her younger sister Honey in Colchester. The shop is called Bindis & Brides. She is happily separated from her abusive husband Armin with whom she had an arranged marriage. Out shopping one day she meets Joel Winters who is waiting to pounce on anyone buying curry powder to tell him how to cook a curry to impress his latest conquest. Joel is a playboy and a successful mountaineer. He's also in love with Candy, but this doesn't stop him from "shagging" anyone he can get his hands on. He calls on Zarleena for help on several occasions for help with a curry and they become friends.

Zarleena's husband comes back into her life to abuse her again and basically try and get anything he can financially as his family have disowned him. He wants revenge on his wife and Joel basically has to help Zarleena out.

How far will Armin go to get what he wants out of Zarleena? Will anything happen between Joel and Zarleena? Will tragedy strike where least expected?

~ANALYSIS~

The first chapter deals with Joel and Zarleena's first meeting in the supermarket and the following few chapters flit back and forth between Joel's life and Zarleena's, pretty separate at this stage of the book. Joel's much younger sister Eloise lives with him and is a spoilt pampered brat who does nothing for a living except get money out of her well off brother every time she bats her eyelids to go shopping.

Joel is a successful mountaineer who thinks nothing of taking foolish risks whilst out mountaineering. He's quite rich and women seem to fall at his feet, he picks up women left, right and centre and every one of them seem to have no issues with having sex with him, which is what happens with alarming regularity during the book. To my mind, he doesn't come across as a likeable character; pretty self-absorbed, promising to be faithful to his long term girlfriend Candy (and by long term I mean 6 WHOLE months) who lives in Cornwall, vain, admitting himself that he's an Essex boy and doesn't have much in the way of manners, and over indulges his annoying younger sister.

Eloise is totally self absorbed too, and basically does everything she can to get money out of her doting older brother, she is a bit too obsessed with sticking her nose into his love affairs and has an unhealthy curiosity about her brother's body verging on incestuous. Her character doesn't do much more than ask her brother for money, shop and interfere in his "relationships" throughout the whole book. I didn't take to her at all. On top of all that she has a penchant for dumping her brother's "conquests" for him by telling them he has AIDS, which I did not find amusing in the least.

Zarleena has managed to make a successful business out of pretty much nothing, she sold the gold given to her as wedding gifts to fund the business and it's worked out pretty well, although I didn't quite understand why someone so dead set against arranged marriages opens up a shop selling products mostly purchased by those going into exactly those kind of marriages. Throughout the book we have her pretty much slating arranged marriages, Indian traditions and culture, yet she's running a very typical Indian business for a woman with her beliefs. Her weakness in the book is chocolate, she devours chocolate as often as possible and then makes up for her guilt by using her step machine. Her character is a size 8 and at times she wonders if she's fat, so basically she's pretty stupid too! Who ever heard of someone who's a size 8 and FAT? When it comes down to it, Zarleena is pretty much the same as most other women, she has sexual needs and urges and fancies the pants off Joel, and quite honestly I found her rather fickle too. Here we have a woman who's been atrociously abused throughout her marriage, has broken away from her husband and moved on with her life, is managing fine without a man in her life and goes all gooey at the first attractive man who gives her any attention. I didn't find her to be a strong character at all. The back of the book says "Together, Zarleena and Joel plan a spectacular revenge on the man who wants to bring her down. Will they succeed?" Excuse me, I read this book cover to cover and at no time did I figure out how they planned anything together. She's too much of a wimp and any planning done for any acts of revenge was done by Joel (that's not a spoiler by the way, just a fact). Even when she finds out who has been sending racist letters to her and her sister, I found Zarleena's reaction rather lame and unexciting. I felt this main character could have been given a lot more depth than she was and developed into someone who came across as stronger after having had such bad experiences. I didn't really feel much empathy with her at all.

Armin, the abusive husband, was a real pig of a man. One would be forgiven for thinking that all Indian men who have arranged marriages are unstable bullies who just thrive on battering their wives. This is honestly not the case. You really want to beat the living daylights out of this guy; he's that obnoxious and unpleasant. He even calls himself The Great Armin several times, which is ludicrous! He has a cousin, Prem, who appears throughout the book, who basically idolises Armin and believes all his stories about how his wife cheated on him and he never laid a finger on her in violence, never sexually abused her, etc. The Prem character is a total twit too although he was pitiful rather than unpleasant.

I don't want to go into analysing any of the other characters in the book such as Candy, the "long term" girlfriend that Joel is supposed to be in love with or Honey the women's rights activist sister and business partner of Zarleena or Joel's older brother Dylan or nephew Danny who idolises Joel much to the distaste of his prudish parents. If, in a film, they would all be supporting actors with not so major roles, in this book, their characters aren't delved into deeply enough to warrant any more in depth discussion about them!

I'm not an advocate for arranged marriages (well forced ones anyway) by any means but I know many people who've had successful arranges marriages as well as many who haven't. The arranged marriage has the same change of failing as a love marriage and I felt the author's constant references to them in a negative manner was somewhat unfair. I never had one myself and generally I feel that Indian people born and brought up in the UK should be able to choose their own life partner without their parents forcing their choices on them, should they choose not to have an arranged marriage. The author obviously has issues with arranged marriage. I felt she harped on a bit too much about Indian culture in a negative way throughout the book. A non-Indian reading this book would probably end up having a very poor view of Indians.

I also found that there were serious undertones of a mixed relationship not being accepted by Indian families as a whole. That's so not the case. Being an Indian born and brought up in the UK and having many Indian friends of my age, or older or younger, I know many in mixed relationships and it's pretty much accepted. There are, of course, a few small minded people who have issues with it, but in general, it's accepted the same as marriage to an Indian, whether arranged or not, would be. There's a bit in the book when Zarleena talks to her mother about Joel and her "relationship" with him and I felt this was unnecessary in the context of the story as was her mother's reaction.

I would like to add that there were some parts of the book that made me laugh out loud, in fact, at the time, I laughed so hard it brought tears to my eyes. One such example: "Most Indian girls who live with their parents have one arm bigger than the other. Constantly stirring dhal and chopping coriander causes this lop-sided disability" and "Many Indian men daren't arm wrestle a woman with her dhal stirring arm for fear of losing credibility in their family."

Somewhat amusing too was Zarleena thinking about how popular saris were becoming with non-Indians: "Fingers crossed and David Beckham might wear one soon. The Real Madrid Sari Football Kit was a sure winner. And if by bad luck a thread fell off David's sari, his wife could wear one too."

~NISHA MINHAS ~

I've read up a bit about the author and it seems she left her family to move in with her white partner, Dave, who is mentioned in the acknowledgements in the book. Her family didn't accept her choice so she moved out with her man. Well ok so she's based her book (and maybe several others) on her experiences somewhat but maybe she's too quick to tar all Indian families with the same brush. I wasn't forced into an arranged marriage by my parents and they never disowned me (nor even considered it) when I married someone of a different religion!

~PRODUCT PLACEMENT?~

One other thing that struck me about this book was the blatant product placement. On no less than 20 separate occasions Red Bull is mentioned and Joel even has a permanent stash in his car. I wondered whether the author had some kind of deal with Red Bull to mention it so many times. It was over the top the way it was so blatantly mentioned so often during the book, there was even a bit where Joel receives a text message from his pal saying Red Bull had gone bust! I'm not plugging Red Bull here by the way, I hate the stuff! Oh and look, now I've just given them a free mention here in my article!

~PRICE/OTHER INFO~

I got my copy of Bindis & Brides in the UK for 3.99 from Amazon, although the cover price is listed as 6.99. You can also get a copy from 1alot.co.uk for 5.00 should Amazon have run out of copies. Maybe your local library will have a copy or two somewhere too.

The book was published in 2005 by Simon & Schuster and my edition was first published by Pocket Books and copyrighted up the Berne Convention. The ISBN number is 0 7434 6881 3

~SO?~

I read this book cover to cover in less than a day. Not bad for 485 pages, although I do read pretty fast. It was a fairly enjoyable read (putting aside the author's obvious prejudices against her own Indian race), but it hasn't made me want to go out and read any of her 3 other published books: Chapatti or Chips, Sari & Sins or Passion & Poppadoms. I've done a bit of research on these books and it seems they all have a fairly similar theme; arranged marriages, white men who sleep around or already have partners. I think I'll skip them all. The author's writing style did not impress me to the extent that I finished it and thought "That was a good interesting read."

Overall I'd give Bindis & Brides a generous 5 out of 10. A light read for a Sunday when you have nothing else to do, but nothing more...

~AFTERTHOUGHT~

Joel is obsessed with making curries for his conquests as it drives them mad with lust. I found this aspect of the book quite ridiculous, we're constantly told what an irresistible hunk Joel is and how no woman can resist him so why does it takes a curry to make women hot for him in bed? Didn't quite buy it! I can tell you all for a fact that curry is not needed to make a woman hot for a man who's already hot!

Ahem, just in case anyone was in any doubt, this book most definitely falls into the chick lit category. I think most guys would be bored rigid reading this!