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Bookstores in Kathmandu suddenly started stocking up on Lisa Jewell’s thriller novels as ‘every other person kept asking for them’. I’d heard of her, and even downloaded one of her books (‘The Family Upstairs’) on Kindle. But I had never gotten around to reading it. I picked up ‘The Night She Disappeared’ as authors like Lee Child, Marian Keys, Lucy Foley, and Harlan Coben, to name a few, were raving about it. Coben calls it Jewell’s best thriller yet and Child says the suspense is insane. But I thought The Night She Disappeared was okay. It’s not the best thriller I’ve read, definitely not even one of the good ones. But I had fun while it lasted. 

The story follows the disappearance of 19-year-old teen-mother Tallulah and her boyfriend Zach. It’s 2017 and Tallulah goes on a date with her boyfriend, leaving her baby son Noah with her mother, Kim. The next morning, Kim wakes up to find her daughter hasn’t returned. She calls Tallulah’s friends and finds that she and Zach were last seen at a pool party in a private property near the woods in Surrey. She goes there to inquire and is told that they had called a taxi and left in the wee hours of the morning. 

It’s hinted that maybe the couple ran away. But Kim knows something is off. Tallulah wouldn’t just not come home. She wouldn’t leave Noah like that. A year later, the case has gone cold with no more leads to pursue. Sophie Beck, a mystery writer, moves into a house near the property where Tallulah was last seen. She comes across a sign that says ‘Dig Here’. There she finds a ring that Zach had bought for Tallulah. She then tries to piece together what might have happened that fateful night.   

The story is narrated from three different perspectives—Kim’s, Sophie’s and Tallulah’s. That keeps things fresh and interesting. However, you will easily be able to guess what’s going on, especially if you read thrillers. The writing isn’t that great either. The language feels a little lame at times. But I’d still recommend it if you want a light, breezy read to get your mind off something that is bothering you. 

About the author

Lisa Jewell is a New York Times and Sunday Times #1 bestselling author. Since her debut novel was published in 1999, she has written 18 more books and they have been published worldwide in 25 languages. She is best known for a number of dark psychological thrillers like ‘The Girls’, ‘Then She Was Gone’, and ‘The Family Upstairs’. She was born and lives in London.

Three stars 

Fiction

The Night She Disappeared

Lisa Jewell

Published: 2021

Publisher: Penguin Books

Pages: 482, Paperback 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55922299-the-night-she-disappeared

I distinctly remember watching Bhool Bhulaiyaa back in 2007. I had not watched the movie’s trailer. Watching trailers on YouTube was not really a thing back then. I remember thinking it was an out-and-out comedy when I went to the cinema hall and then getting scared out of my wits when the dreaded Manjulika appeared on-screen. Back then, Bhool Bhulaiyaa was a fantastic movie. It was funny and scary at the same time. 

Fifteen years later, we now get to watch a standalone sequel called ‘Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2’, which is neither funny nor scary. It’s just another Bollywood attempt to capitalize on a successful franchise. Surprisingly, it has done really well at the box office. But like we’ve talked about so many times before in this space, high gross does not necessarily translate to high quality. 

Kartik Aaryan plays Ruhaan Randhawa, a recently orphaned heir who travels wantonly around India as he can afford the lifestyle. On one of his expeditions in Himachal Pradesh, he meets Reet (Kiara Advani), a medical student who plans to go back to her hometown Bhawanigarh, Rajasthan, to get married. 

Befriending each other during the trip, the two take a brief detour, making them miss their bus back home. The said bus plunges down a gorge though, killing everyone abroad. Ruhaan and Reet are saved, but on finding out that her sister wants to marry her would-be groom, Reet decides to let her family believe that she is dead. She then takes Ruhaan to hide for a few days in the family’s old abandoned mansion at Bhawanigarh.

That’s where Manjulika lives! The Manjulika in BB2 is different from the first, with a strong agenda against her twin Anjulika, Reet’s sister-in-law. She has been locked up in a room in the mansion for over 15 years with no one daring to even go near it. Ruhaan and Reet’s clear plan of getting her younger sister hitched gets Manjulika out of her confinement, angrier and fiercer than before. 

Tabu plays the twins Manjulika and Anjulika in this horror-comedy directed by Anees Bazmee. Now we all know Tabu’s track record as a powerful actor, belting out one after another strong performance in Bollywood. She is no less in BB2 as she takes the center stage as the evil Manjulika who wants to destroy everything in her path to vengeance. Even as the homely Anjulika, who is the main target of the wrathful spirit, Tabu is convincing enough. But the problem with BB2 is that the writing, direction and familiarity of Tabu as an actor fail to establish her as a scary ghost.

Vidya Balan, who played Majulika back in 2007, was a relative newcomer in Bollywood. So when she transformed into a ghost, the effect was surprising and horrifying. Unfortunately for Tabu, her almost three-decade-long career in the film industry has given her too much exposure to be taken seriously as an evil spirit in a film like BB2 which focuses more on industry gimmicks than serious writing and production. 

Similarly, Bhool Bhulaiyaa was made when Akshay Kumar’s career as a comedian was peaking. And so was Rajpal Yadav’s. Karthik Aaryan replaces Kumar in the lead but he cannot match the style, energy and charisma of his senior. The newcomer, apparently a heartthrob amongst young women, is yet to find his mojo in Bollywood. 

The sadder part is Rajpal Yadav losing his charm. He revives his role as Chhote Pandit in the film but the difference of 15 years seems to have taken a toll on the actor’s vivacity. Although BB2 can be called a multi-starrer with the number of famous supporting actors it features, I mention Yadav because he was one of the most memorable characters in the first edition. It is only natural for the audience to expect more from him in this one. 

Who should watch it?

Talking about expectations, maybe BB2’s nomenclature just burdened it with expectation. Maybe if it had taken some other name, a lot of people, including this reviewer, would not have expected much and wasted time on it. Still, BB2’s box office collections suggest this is a worth-a-try movie on Netflix. People who like slapstick comedy and light horror could still enjoy it. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2KRKxAb2ek 

Rating: 2.5 stars

Genre: Comedy, drama

Actors: Karthik Aaryan, Kiara Advani, Tabu

Director: Anees Bazmee

Run time: 2hrs 25mins

Prayaag Akbar’s debut novel ‘Leila’ was adapted into a Netflix series by Deepa Mehta. Starring Huma Qureshi, Rahul Khanna, and Sanjay Suri, among others, the series has six episodes and ends on a cliffhanger. I believe you should always read the book first and then watch its film or TV adaptation but, invariably, there are times I do the opposite. And I always regret it. Leila, the book is better than Leila, the series. The series is a little dramatized while the story in the book feels raw and real. Akbar writes well. It’s easy to conjure up scenes in your head. 

Essentially a story about a mother looking for her missing daughter, Leila is set in a dystopian world—a world that seems likely in the near future. It’s unsettling because of its plausibility. The world is divided into ‘sectors’, according to religion in order to maintain ‘purity’. Protected by walls and guarded by Repeaters (young men given the authority to enforce random rules to keep separate people according to race, class, and religion), people need permission to enter these sectors. Anyone who doesn’t follow strict rules is harshly punished. 

At the start of the novel, we see Shalini, the novel’s narrator, and her husband Rizwan, gearing up to celebrate their daughter’s birthday. Next thing we know, Shalini is in a ‘purity camp’—a place meant for women who don’t follow the rules. She’s lost her husband (he’s beaten brutally and probably killed) and her daughter (she vanishes along with her nanny, Sapna). From the camp, she’s sent to live in the Towers outside the city. As broken as her spirit might be, she’s determined to search for her daughter and 16 years on, she’s relentless in her pursuit. 

Leila is a great commentary on how class and religion divide us. It’s a reminder of our  bleak future if we continue to let traditional social constructs determine our actions. The book is also a heartfelt portrayal of maternal love, of the lengths a mother will go to care for and protect her child. Shalini, Akbar’s heroine, could be anyone of us. She’s not courageous or noble. She’s as good or bad as her circumstances. One minute you find yourself hating her for being so stubborn and then loving her the next as you see she’s trying and failing and yet not giving up. 

Those who read and love dystopian stories will perhaps get a sense of déjà vu. It’s oddly reminiscent of the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. But Leila is dark and disturbing (and thus you are hooked) because it’s easy to imagine a future where things are happening exactly as described in the book.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34932175-leila 

Three stars

Fiction

Leila

Prayaag Akbar

Published: 2017

Publisher: Simon & Schuster 

Pages: 263, Paperback 

In his latest movie “Jayeshbhai Jordaar,” actor Ranveer Singh plays the titular Jayesh Patel—a happy-go-lucky man who lives in a village called Pravingadh, Gujarat, with his pregnant wife Mudra (Shalini Pandey) and daughter Siddhi (Jia Vaidhya). His family has been in power in the village for generations. 

When his father Prutvish (Boman Irani) faces a tough competition in the village sarpanch election, he puts Mudra as a front—and she wins. But she neither gets to exercise her power nor to attend any of the public hearings. For all intents and purposes, her father-in-law is still the village head. 

This is just the beginning of the film, giving you a glimpse of what is to come. Pravingadh is a village riddled with superstition and patriarchy. Jayesh’s family is no exception. In fact, his father is a strong proponent of patriarchy; he forbids women from using bathing soaps as, apparently, their fragrance draws unwanted male attention. Jayesh and his mother Jasodha (Ratna Shah Pathak) are bystanders and sometimes unwillingly complicit in Prutvish’s atrocities. Mudra has no say in the house. 

Jayesh’s parents are unhappy with their daughter-in-law as she has not been able to give him a son—an heir to continue the Patel family lineage. His eldest daughter is nine, and since his wife Mudra has had six abortions as all those fetuses tuned out to be female. 

This time, Jayesh’s parents are confident it is a male. But as Mudra gets into the last stage of pregnancy, Jayesh finds out that she has a daughter. Fearing for the life of both mother and the unborn daughter, Jayesh devises an escape from the village. His ordeal while running away with the pregnant Mudra and Siddhi, while his powerful father and his clan are in hot pursuit, makes up for the story of Jayeshbhai Jordaar.

But this is still a side story. Directed by Divyang Thakkar, Jayeshbhai Jordaar is an Indian comedy-drama film that has so many incidents that deserve to become stand-alone stories of their own. The film exposes a part of India (and South Asia by extension) that is still reeling under ancient cultures and malpractices. 

In their patriarchal world, Suyesh is a misfit: a feminist who believes in equal rights. He cannot straight up rebel against his father but he makes every attempt to protect his wife and daughter in secret. He locks his bedroom door and pretends to hit Mudra because his parents want him to but he does not actually lay a finger on her. He steals bathing soap from his mother’s safe because Mudra loves the smell. 

Actor Ranveer Singh, known for his trailblazing fashion and style, shuns all his ornamentation to play an ordinary Gujarati villager in the film. Jayeshbhai is Bollywood’s take on Indian social issues and Singh shows a commitment to the cause through his performance. This is something Akshay Kumar did in the past before he lost his mojo. I just think Ranveer Singh does it better and with more conviction. 

Actors Boman Irani and Ratna Pathak Shah naturally assume their positions like the class act they are. As the villain, Irani gets a stronger role and performs it with natural ease. A new but popular name in South Indian cinema, Shalini Pandey playing Mudra, a daughter-in-law in a strict Gujrati household, does not get many opportunities to shine but this does not stop her from showcasing her skills whenever she is on screen. 

The young Jia Vaidya as Jayesh’s daughter Siddhi is the show-stealer, though. Despite living in a world of voiceless women, Siddhi is smart, sassy and vocal. She is one who gives her father the name of ‘Jayeshbhai Jordaaar’. Vaidya’s portrayal of Siddhi is a treat to watch.  

Who should watch it?

Jayeshbhai Jordaar is a PG drama that can be enjoyed by the whole family. It is not only entertaining but also educational. Still, it is a Bollywood adaptation, so you can expect some over-the-top sequences and improbable situations. There are moments when you feel the filmmakers could have done better. But those are few and far between and definitely not a deal-breaker. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fppJtxJ7RWY 

Rating: 3 stars

Genre: Comedy, drama

Actors: Ranveer Singh, Shailini Pandey, Boman Irani

Director: Divyang Thakkar

Run time: 2hrs 1min