It is a formula which never fails - mix cricket into whatever you do and your berth to Successpuram is suddenly pushed from a WL to CNF. Okay, I have been dying to travel via train these days, which used to be the journey of books along with a journey from here to there(unlike Namesake, I never needed an overcoat though, thankfully). But not-traveling does not restrict me to not-reading, and I got to lay my hands on the "Zoya Factor" last weekend.
This is Anuja Chauhan’s debut work and she has spun a story around her real life - a story of an ad agency executive Zoya, working day and night to catch hold of film stars, sporting heroes(which mean cricketers) to shoot a twenty second advertisement. This even involves running to the nearest shoe store to buy a Nike, just because a senior player demands to be shot in a Nike - even if the ad is of a soft drink. However the twist in tale comes when the ever-losing Indian Cricket team members realize that she is their lucky charm and they always win when she has breakfast with them on the day of the match. If she kisses a bowler on his cheeks, he takes a hat trick. A hug to a batsman, makes him get a century. This realization changes Zoya’s life forever.
The Cricket control Board takes her to Australia, to the world cup, and she becomes a National Goddess overnight. However, one man does not believe the lucky charm story - the captain of the Indian team - Nikhil Khoda, who believes in the toil-and-get attitude.
From here till the last page of the book, the story of Nikhil and Zoya is 30% M&B, 70% Absolutely Crazy Humor(As the Author herself would have said it. read the book to know what I mean). In a Douglas Adams style, Anuja brings absolutely unrelated stuff together to create a "whoa-what-was-that" brand of humor - a godman proclaiming her to be the Devi, the Australian Cricket Board filing a complaint against her saying that she is a unfair advantage to the Indian team, A politician offering her the ticket from Ayodhya, An agent bringing her surrogate Agarbatti ads for a Bidi company, a sexually freaked out four year old kid, and others.
As a debut writer, Anuja deals with her innumerable characters very well, each and every one of them has a definitive and strong role to play. The lead characters of Zoya and Nikhil though are the ones which have been taken straight away from the 120-page love stories which are sold for Rs 20/- at the Sunday market. Nikhil is a tall, dark, handsome, rude and arrogant man with a heart of gold(yawn!) and Zoya is a plumpy, short, always-on-a-bad-hair-day cricket hater kind of a girl. However, thankfully, even though story revolves around them - it never gets too mushy or too romantic, and Anuja does not leave the weird-humor line anywhere, and specially towards the end, where it gets all chaotic, and keeps you stuck to the book till the end.
The best part of the book though is not its story line, its the Indian-ness of the book. The setting, the scenario and the characters are people whom you could actually believe in. The description of Karol Bagh, the army man(Zoya’s brother) who get injured at the border because Pakistani’s start firing after the match, the description of the Indian Cricket lovers - all that makes a good read. The cricket matches have been captured extremely well- you can actually see the match live as you read the book.
One Shot Review Comment
A good read over the weekend - can be read twice over. Not a collector’s item though.*