Book Review: Milan Vohra's Tick-Tock We're 30!

‘Interesting, isn’t it, how someone is always utterly attractive to someone else? For every male tree frog, there is a female tree frog whose dry skin and warts and bulging eyes are the most divine. and to you, Lara Bagai, a karela is a thing of beauty,’ Nishad comments.

So he remembers I love karela. So what?

‘I take it your interest in frogs is purely academic?’ I snigger.

‘I promise you I am not in danger of being madly besotted by one anytime soon,’ he half-smiles.

Honestly, I am not too much into reviewing the books. The only reason I agreed for this one is because I could get a chance to read one...more so, a love story that I am ridiculously addicted to and because it’s a Milan Vohra book, the Indianised version of Mills & Boon!

The book takes you through a very interesting storyline where a bunch of friends decides to celebrate their ‘turning 30’ as they had once decided to do so whenever the last one hits the mark. So, as Lara Bagai is the youngest one and the last to do so, it’s time for the celebration through a union they plan. Like Sita names it, the OTWT,' Oh Teri, We're Thirty!' affair.

The gathering has Lara cheerful and all prepped up. But there's an added deal that, unluckily, concurs with this one. The one that Lara and Nishad had made one evening agreeing to marry each other if they were both single and available by the time they both turned thirty. Lara is pretty sure that this pact was made when she was wasted.

As Lara was totally smitten by Ranndeep, her male biker boyfriend, the last thing she could ever think was the possibility of the deal turning into reality. But what the heck! She is soon turning thirty and still single as Ranndeep turned out to be a douchebag and moreover, Nishad hasn’t forgotten about the pact.

Then comes Perzaan, the Turkish bartender and Lara’s fake boyfriend for a week until the SN gang is in the house. Does she pull through this or the smart Nishad sees anything through this pretence? Well, this is not the only story playing hard at the pajama-wala uncle’s house and there are few others playing out, too. Old flames are wafted and relighted, odd couplings materialize, sensual angles get definite, and sexual dysfunctions get amended! Full of mischiefs and excitement, food carousels and journeys down memory lane, tricks and fights, Tick-tock, We're 30 ensues at an incredibly curt speed.

There is sufficient melodrama in these 400-odd pages. The characters are superbly outlined ---from the recurrently constipated Thin Rita to pleased eye, Sai. Odds are that you'll have a pictorial silhouette of each one of them in your cognizance while analysing this book. Great on comedy and dialect idioms, you will somehow not complaint the fact that the book is a bit too extended. In spite of everything, you'd still need to see who each one will end up with and in what way. It will also make you wonder how such a dissimilar set of charismas can be so unified too.

Milan Vohra inscribes modestly and for India's first Mills and Boon novelist, her style is amazingly without overemotional slush and sugary romanticism, although assumed the topic, it could so effortlessly have gone down that street.

On the downside, she could have cut down on certain explanations reducing the number of pages! In all, a good bed-side read!

(This book review is a part of the Promotion conducted by Women's Web, a leading online publication for today's women)