Two Fates: The story of my divorce- Book Review.

I was in a crappy crappy mood a few days back. As in, REALLY CRAPPY. I was ready to bite off a few heads. There was an invisible neon sign around me that said “Beware. Cranky woman inside. Will bite.” I got home, had dinner, and went straight inside my room with a copy of ‘Two Fates: The story of my divorce’ and locked the door. I did the customary ritual that I perform with every new book- read the last two pages first. Then I flipped to the front, read the dedication, acknowledgements etc, still with a scowl on my face. Five minutes later, I was laughing my head off. I had even forgotten what I was so upset about.

It’s one of those books that you can call un-put-downable. And the fact that it was written by a blogger who I have been following for a long time and whose writing leaves me open-mouthed every single time, made it all more exciting for me.

“Two Fates: The story of my divorce” by Judy Balan, is about Deepika and Rishab, a Tamilian ponnu married to a Punjabi munda. They fell in love, fought with their parents, did a lot of drama, got married, and now four years later, they’ve fallen out of love. Not so uncommon in today’s time and age. They fought over kissing with morning breath, leaving the toilet seat up, fart jokes and indulged in meaningless sex. So they decide to put each other out of misery by getting divorced. Simple, right?

Not quite. Because now, the families of the two have fallen in love with each other. There is major North-South bonding happening, and over all the sambhar-vadas getting mixed with the butter chicken and rotis, Deepika and Rishab find themselves in a fix. How do they get divorced when the families are so obviously in love with each other? Not just that, they consider Deepu and Rish as the perfect couple. The rest of the story is how they plan to get divorced, and in the quest to get away from each other, they find themselves drawn more strongly towards each other. And in the process, they discover what they truly want to do with their lives.

Judy is a self-confessed Grammar Nazi (Psstt! She’s a Virgo too :P), so even if you scrounge the book with a magnifying glass, you won’t find any errors. If you’ve read her blogs, you will also know that her language is impeccable. Neither too flowery, nor ordinary. Just right. And her book is just like that. It screams ‘JUDY!!’all over. And that sense of humour. Simply superb. It will leave you guffawing aloud. And the best part is, it all seems so effortless! There is no forced humour. She’s taken a dig at every possible cliché that you’ll find in your run-of-the-mill love stories. And we the likes the funnies, don't we?

The battle-scenes between the two protagonists are highlight! So cute are they, that you would want to have fights just like that. I swear. And if you’ve read “Two States: The story of my marriage”, you will enjoy the humour even more. :) Now here’s one more author who will manage to make India read.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading her blog for a while, and also because I comment on her posts and inbox her on FB once in a while, all the while I was reading the book, I felt as though I was reading a book written by someone I know very well. Someone of my own. And it thrilled me to bits that I could actually let her know personally (or as close as I can come to ‘personally’ on FB) what I felt about the book. And she was sweet enough to reply to it promptly.

So go buy the book pronto. And instead of placing it in the shelf and forgetting about it, read it. You won’t regret it. I promise.

Dear Judy, please write your second book soon. I want it ready to help me through my next bout of depression. Seriously.