Book Title: Piku & Viru (A Fan-Actor Drama) by
Priyanka Agarwal
Author: Priyanka Agarwal
Format: Kindle
Total Number of Pages: 420
Language: English
Publisher: Amazon
Publishing
Date: 2018
This story
runs like a movie for me, probably it has a movie star in it. As the story
opens up I got introduced to our lead character name Piyanjali Kumari aka Piku.
She is a content writer – mainly write travel stories for a website that deals
in travel and lifestyle kind of stuff. I always had the impression that content
writers in Mumbai get well paid as compared to other cities. Her story reveals
something else. Her boss and a few other members do not sound co-operative to
her. May be she is smart, extra talented, or better than them in creativity. In
nutshell, it is revealing that her life in office isn’t that good. She thinks
of leaving the job but lacks the temerity. On the other hand, she is worried
about her age, as she is brooding for marriage with a right partner. Her last
ex – Homi – isn’t there for her. They have issues. Also, she isn’t getting any
good man on dating apps as well. You can see that she is surrounded with
desires and competency and not so good results. The kind of life she portrays
is a typical metro city life – in these city people can live without food but not
without a partner – they need someone with whom they can share or enjoy or look
forward. I understand the kind of city life staged in this novel is something
that makes one lonely and reclusive – the intensity is higher if someone is
into a creative sort of a job. I mean to say there is a lot of background
coverage for the overall story, though much sweeps and anecdotes and history is
associated with Piku.
Piku falls in love
with Vian Rustom, who is a popular TV actor. If you see TV soaps I hope you can
understand how he must have looked – tall, fair, smart and immaculate dressing
sense. Isn’t it that nowadays TV stars are more beautiful than the mainstream movie
actors? To make the story movable, we have this angelic voice of ‘H’ with Piku.
See, the story stretches over 400 pages, till midway you will find the story
getting repetitive in its outlook. As the events and thrills and actions all
take place around Piku, we often go to her office, her basic tussle while
traveling and at home with a younger sister and of course with parents. For me,
the story sounds moveable when she finally happens to meet the man of her
dreams or say her celebrity crush: Vian. In her strange yet credible fantasy
world, she renames Vian as Viru. It’s not Jay and Viru from Sholay. It is Piku
and Viru. People in love often name each other reverently, nothing to be felt
offended.
It is often
said that celebrity people are lonely because they are self-obsessed. May be!
And here, in the characterization of Viru I see the veracity of that statement.
The author should have explored why TV celebrities are alone and mean and all
that. She should have shown some reasons and sweeps and subplots for that. Viru
is always busy with shooting – he is starring quite a number of serials.
The moments
that they together spent are enthralling, especially the film studios ones. I
loved that part, the author intricately put forward as what goes in there – on
the sets, in the make-up van, small allocated rooms for actors and actresses,
and most importantly about the ambience and the tenacity of people working
there.
Talking about
second part of the novel, it deals with Piku’s life after the heartbreak. As
it’s given in the blurb. Had the story written in third voice narration, it
would have leveraged the author to put a lot more about Vian, after all he too
is an important and equally lead character in the story. It is a good and
lengthy novel that you will begin liking after reaching midway crises.
Priyanka’s humours suppressed tone makes it worth reading. In snatches the
intensity of the book may push you for melancholy otherwise it is a light read.
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