Review: Arranged To Fall In Love
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 25, 2014
REVIEW OF THE MALHOTRA BRIDE BY SUNDARI VENKATRAMANFromADIANA RAY.Sundari sheds a spotlight on how marital relationships are formed among some business, upper class families in Mumbai. Trapped in a gilded cage, Sunita is a young vivacious girl with stars in her eyes and wants to do what so many other young girls of today want to….just explore life and create a little niche for herself with her experiences and accomplishments. Not too bad…right? Wrong, that is denied to her as it is not how her family operate. The whole family is under the thumb of her business man father and he never lets them forget it.Akshay on the other hand also belongs to the same class of society but is lucky to be born into a forward thinking, modern household. Even though he is against the whole concept of an arranged marriage, on a whim, he decides to go and see the girl incognito and that is it… he is floored. However he has to tread carefully as Sunita is a nervous filly who is shying away from marriage as well.The author takes us through the paces and builds up a vivid picture of the internal dynamics of these families and casts a light on society expectations too. Both the characters are well developed as are the supporting characters. The tenderness and protectiveness of Akshay, gives you a nice warm feeling and Sunita is the young wide eyed innocent, unaware of her potential. There were two minor pieces which jarred a bit with me: the first was with what Sunita does when she meets Akshay for the first time to put him off. It was all too clichéd. Though Ms Venkatraman also brings this up when she attributes embarrassment to Sunita for the way she behaved. The second was the whole violent episode at the end; I felt it was very abrupt and didn’t really fit in with the story but then that is just my opinion.On the whole I recommend it for a very nice light read. Great work Sundari Venkatraman!