Title: Made in China
Author: Parinda Joshi
Published by: HarperColiins Publishers, 2019
Price: Rs. 250
Pages: 306
Rate: 4/5
“Raghu Mehta is a desperate man. His handicraft imports business has unexpectedly collapsed and cash is drying out quickly, his wife thinks he is a loser and society considers him irrelevant. Meanwhile, his closest friends and family all seem to be running flourishing businesses and living luxurious lives in Surat, the diamond capital of India.
A trip to China to scout for a new consumer goods business offers a glimmer of hope. But Raghu instead gets sucked into the black-market trade in the back alleys of Beijing. Everything about this new opportunity goes against his god-fearing, vegetarian, middle-class mindset - can he quash his natural instincts to make a success of it?
Darkly comical, 'Made in China' is a soul-stirring and thrilling entrepreneurial journey of a man willing to do anything he can to make it big.”
The book starts with a dream sequence reciting the typical aspiring middle class people to dream big. The dream is described in such a manner that the protagonist, dashing Raghu in a tweak will own the heart as an established, famous and wealthy businessman. But it’s just a dream. And the dream too doen’t miss the typical male chauvinist insecurity to see his wife with another person. The portrayal of Raghu’s character from the beginning to end is sketched with subtle attainment. Mainly when you have Rajkumar Rao in your mind who played the role of Raghu in the movie Made in China after this book, the character comes out too lively. Raghu, a middleclass Gujarati businessman suddenly get doomed to his ongoing business and then incidentally landed up in China to start afresh a new way to earn money, a new way to give a kick start to a new business. Business is flowing in his blood and being a true blue entrepreneur Raghu always looks positive to choose the path of being a successful businessman any time soon. The struggling journey of Raghu continues with ups and downs painting some hilarious incidents through out the book. Whether Raghu will turn out as a renowned wealthy businessman or not, the readers have to finish the book. The suspense shouldn’t be broken at any cost. The story of Raghu’s struggle floats with a gripping thrill, where the writer meticulously described how Raghu reached China and his experiences over there then back to India with a new aspiring dream. Few hilarious moments would bring tears in your eyes. Like - being a hard-core vegetarian, Raghu is served with the typical non-veg Chinese food that is also when his hunger pangs almost thrust him to starve to death. Thinking in mind the dishes like gobi manchurian or fried rice are going to be served, his encounter with rattlesnake or baby cobra’s heart is thoroughly rib-tickling.
Parinda has described the dungy lanes and the lifestyles of China in such a manner that one will literally feel walking as a shadow of Raghu. Though the elements of comedy is fully tried to be incorporated, keeping in mind the genre Dark Comedy, Parinda to some extent failed to create the magic. The characterisation of each role portrayed vey soundly. One will always feel like meeting them in person, not as a character from the novel. Even the description of the places where so well described that it intends the reader to visualise as if being there. Being a budding script write Parinda Joshi did a praiseworthy job. The grip in the writing skill and usage of a vast arena of vocabularies call for an applause. Hope the movie will do the justice to the book.
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