The Windfall

Starred review from May 22, 2017
Culture and capital clash in Basu's charming, funny debut, which finds middle-aged Anil and Bindu Jha flush with new money after Anil sells his phone directory website for a small fortune. The couple moves from their modest, cramped, noisy home in an East Delhi apartment complex to the gated community of Gurgaon, where keeping up appearances means hiring security guards and making extravagant purchases. As they try to adjust to their new lifestyle, their son, Rupak, struggles with his M.B.A. program and his own needs from halfway around the world in upstate New York, oscillating between white Florida native Elizabeth and Serena, also from Delhi, with whom he feels pressured by tradition to pursue companionship. Add to the mix Reema, Mrs. Jha's old friend from East Delhi who finds herself wooed by the brother of the Jhas' new neighbor, and Basu sets the table for a modern and heartfelt comedy of haves and have-nots. Shuttling between characters, the novel addresses a rapidly changing India from a plethora of perspectives, and the result leaves readers laughing and engrossed.

April 15, 2017
A middle-aged Delhi couple find themselves suddenly wealthy.Mr. and Mrs. Jha are no longer young when they suddenly come into a great deal of money. Mr. Jha has sold a website he created. The money allows the Jhas to move from their East Delhi housing complex to Gurgaon, a much ritzier neighborhood, where each house has a gate, a guard, and sometimes a swimming pool. Mr. Jha throws himself into their new lifestyle, ordering a couch embedded with Swarovski crystals (which turns out to be as uncomfortable as it sounds). Mrs. Jha, meanwhile, can't convince herself to use the new hot showers, preferring instead to stick with the bucket and mug she's used to. In the meantime, the Jhas' son, Rupak, is studying for his MBA in New York. His parents don't know it yet, but he's failing his classes. Worse, he's trying to balance two women: Indian Serena, who rather resembles his mother; and blonde, American Elizabeth, whom Rupak can't imagine fitting in to his Indian life. Basu's debut novel is a funny, deceptively light treatment of money and manners in modern-day Delhi. Mr. Jha suffers from a bad case of keeping-up-with-the-Joneses--though in this case it's the Chopras next door, and they've gone so far as to have a reproduction of the Sistine Chapel installed in their foyer ceiling. Then, too, there's Mrs. Ray, a young widow from the Jhas' old neighborhood who is soon thrown together with Mr. Chopra's well-to-do brother, with predictable results. Basu manages these various storylines well, and her writing is sincere. But at times the humor feels forced, strained. Each of the characters is flawed, but those flaws seem to elicit pity rather than sympathy. At a certain point, their moneyed lives don't seem as funny as they do alienating and sad. There's something unsettling about all this that the ending does nothing to assuage, though it seems to want to. The humor seems strained in this comedy of errors, manners, and money.

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April 15, 2017

It's not easy keeping up with the Chopras, as Mr. and Mrs. Jha are finding out. They have just moved into a new luxury development in the wealthy Gurgaon area of Delhi, now that Mr. Jha has sold his website for millions. He is eager to leave their humble, cramped apartment in East Delhi and meet more upscale new neighbors, such as the flashy Mr. and Mrs. Chopra. Mrs. Jha is a modest, unpretentious woman who misses the close sense of community they had before, even though their old neighbors could drive one another crazy. Their son Rupak is in America, supposedly studying for an MBA but about to get kicked out of school owing to his lackluster performance. He also continues to keep his American girlfriend a secret from his parents. The novel's subplot involves Mrs. Ray, an attractive young widow from the old neighborhood. VERDICT This is a delightful comedy of manners with a lot of heart; the author seems to be genuinely fond of all her characters, foibles and all. Set mainly in India, the novel's universal theme and very entertaining story should appeal to a wide variety of readers.--Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA

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