Karishma Attari

By Jhumoor Bose

Rs 150

When you look back at Bridget Jones’ Diary’s caught-wearing-granny-pants-on-a-date humour, it’s easy to see why the confessional mode makes such a happy mix with chick-lit. Another turn-of-the-century phenomenon, Sex and the City, got the formula down pat, going from a syndicated column to the blitz of television, cinema and, of course, paperback.

Today, nothing makes the subjective personal essay as easily available as the Internet, with bloggers who have taken impromptu personal writing to new heights. Have a confession to make? Why not air it out publically while you remain anonymous? Consider the PostSecret blog — it is a website which publishes “extraordinary confessions from ordinary lives” gathered through anonymous Internet contributors. Everyone’s dirty little secrets, penned down in postcard format, have now made it to the respectable hardback.
First time author Jhoomur Bose is no stranger to the advantages of having a popular blog — her blog attracted publisher interest when the idea for her novel was still in its inception. A blog can change your life and, interestingly, Confessionally Yours has an interplay between the world of print and the world of blogs where that is exactly
what happens. Its heroine Polly works as an intern at a
magazine called Tabloid and despite all attempts to
lead a safe and domestic existence, her world gets very complicated when she is assigned the exposé of an anonymous blogger.
There is a dual narrative running through the book, which contrasts the life of the dull-as-a-dishcloth protagonist, Polly, with the no-holds-barred sex-log of the Virgin Bride in her blog Vindaloo & Vibrators. Polly may be a journalist, but is lacking almost entirely the gumption required to get ahead professionally or in her personal life. “Do you have anything to say for yourself, Polly?” asks her overbearing boss Comma. Turns out, Polly doesn’t. She is silent before her “Dragon” mother-in-law who visits every month to play mind games; she says nothing to her husband Sid when after a night of drunken sex he mutters another woman’s name; and she is unable to defend herself even with her “bestie” Ragini, whose wholesome remarks go along the lines of, “Sometimes I don’t know if you’re naïve or just plain stupid.” Throughout the novel, Polly is forced to confront her failures: “(Ragini) thinks I am a doormat. Comma thinks I am a doormat. Sid thinks I am a doormat.” All the while she wonders why this happened to her — “I’ve always been a good girl.”
The Virgin Bride meanwhile, behind the veil of an anonymous blogger, makes more interesting confessions: “The underwired bra is the single, most evil invention meant to constantly denigrate the female body. It’s a constant reminder of that which you don’t have, those that were once pert and those that look better on other women.” Her sex life is revealed in all its details and an entry ends with a post-script: “Women with bitch ma-in-laws: Don’t nag, just shag.” Unlike Polly, she has no illusions about “true love”.
Predictably, the Virgin Bride and Polly have only a few degrees of separation. Events from a drunken office party spill over until Polly must decide whether to team up with the Virgin Bride and choose between her career and her relationships. It would be nice to see Polly become resourceful, unfortunately that isn’t a real choice — Polly is pushed against the wall so completely that she has no alternative but to push back.
Many mysteries unfold in Confessionally Yours, not the least of which is why Polly, despite being a journalist and metropolitan “modern” woman, plays the role of suffering wife to a fault. Or, perhaps, that’s the whole point of this novel — men are uniformly bad, women are uniformly long suffering until maternal hormones kick in and transform them into tigresses who will do anything to protect their young. Even the highly spirited Virgin Bride — who goes with the motto, “Get them by their balls & their hearts & minds will follow” — turns out to be just another woman working hard at the sex to preserve the empty shell of a marriage with an indifferent husband.
This is a cynical book where marriage is a one-way street for women, and the law of the jungle operates in professional and social life. What’s more, good girls and bad girls both fall by the wayside in the cruel world of male domination. Every marital relationship in Confessionally Yours is either marked by abuse, adultery, indifference or, often, by a cocktail mix of all three. The sex advice by Virgin Bride is spunky, but what’s provocative doesn’t necessarily add up to anything progressive or even liberal. The anonymous blogger’s fury and Polly’s revenge go too much by the formula of a woman scorned; what’s more, they seem quite sold on the conservative ideals themselves: until they reach breaking point, they do everything possible to save their marriages, no matter how humiliating. By the time Polly does gain a voice, it feels too little, too late.
It’s not that the confessional genre or chick-lit always throws up feminist or radical ideas: Bridget Jones’ Diary certainly didn’t. But if it isn’t taking you somewhere new, it had better be a fun ride, and Confessionally Yours stalls on both counts.