The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad: Has life lessons, but preachy in the middle

 

Title: The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad
Author: Twinkle Khanna 
Price: ₹299
Publisher: Juggernaut
Rating: 3.5/5 

 

 

Twinkle Khanna’s Bollywood connection precedes her everywhere she goes. She may now have dabbled in interior design, social work and now writing, but seems like the actor’s tag has stuck too strongly for anyone to take her seriously as an author.

 

Trying hard to brush off the filmy resume, she first wrote Mrs Funnybones.  In my opinion, the first of her attempts was commendable but since I had been regularly reading her columns, I did not find her Mrs Funnybones that very appealing.

 

Neat, easy on the eyes and an extremely fast read, Mrs Funnybones does have a penchant for bringing out the mundane in quite a humorous manner. In the case of The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad, be sure there is no rib-tickling humour but stark social realities that slowly register as the pages fly past.

 

It is one breezy read and is a compilation of four short stories – weird, thought-provoking and inspiring . 229 pages of stories from four different worlds, on man and woman fighting for their own space on the platform called life.

 

There are plenty of lessons strewn all over – on love, on living life, on surmounting challenges, on taking a stand. Each of the four stories chart the journey of that one person who was too odd to fit neatly into the pattern of life or society.

 

Her protagonist in the first story, Lakshmi Prasad leaves us with a motto urging all women to take note. It says, “...ten trees like the ten fingers with which we women can hold our own destinies firmly in our hands.” Her second protagonist, Noni Appa, a very relatable old woman in Mumbai, who realises that there is no age for love and love cannot be defined by religion or time. For it is much like “...a well-worn cashmere sweater that hugs in the right places and doesn't tug at the wrong ones while keeping you warm on wintry days.”

 

The star attraction, however, is not the character on whom the title is based but Arunachalam Muruganantham and his marvellous invention, the low cost sanitary pad making machine. A story which we all know, but is just peppered with some masala to make it more appealing to the readers.  

 

All her protagonists have one thread in common, their ability to take decisions, to not be bogged down by the brittle ropes of civility and society but to chart paths of their own and make things happen. Philosophy is thrown in for abundant measure and this sometimes tends to bog the pace.

 

Coming to its relevance in today’s age: It does show that these fictitious characters boast of courage that women in India should have when it comes to matters of the heart, marriage or even conviction to stand by their own decisions and not wait for a knight in shining armour to rescue them.

 

As such I wouldn’t say you will find structure or form to this book, it is more like a casual, freewheeling session of stories a couple of friends are most likely to share over tea. There are spaces (and I mean it), where one does feel that a lecture is coming on when it gets into the moral, preachy, philosophical mode. There is no literary strategy, and yes, you cannot expect Twinkle Khanna’s now famous wit and sarcasm to carry the story forward. That was best seen in Mrs Funnybones; this one however, lacks that punch.

 

A good pick-me-up and one that is recommended as well.