Miss New India is Bharati Mukherjee's eighth novel. It was published in 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. [1] [2] [3] [4] Miss New India is "the third part of a trilogy that began with Desirable Daughters (2002) and The Tree Bride (2004)."
Miss New India is Bharati Mukherjee's eighth novel. It was published in 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. [1] [2] [3] [4] Miss New India is "the third part of a trilogy that began with Desirable Daughters (2002) and The Tree Bride (2004)."
Anjali Bose, a young woman, escapes to Bangalore from her stifled existence in the backward and provincial state of Bihar in India. In Bangalore she experiences the newly exploding wealth and growth of the city. She obtains employment in a call center and finds herself surrounded by entrepreneurs and fortunes. Along the way, she overcomes hardships and obstacles to ultimately reinvent herself. The title and the story are a metaphor for the new India that is prosperously emerging on the world stage. [1] The title and story also allude to the old India and the new. [4]
The novel follows Anjali (Angie) Bose, a young ambitious woman from the small village of Gauripur, Bihar in India. She feels trapped in Gauripur and desperately wishes to escape the traditional life her father wants her to live. Anjali's father takes his traditional duty to arrange a marriage for Anjali very seriously, sifting through dozens of candidates, all of whom are rejected by Anjali. He sees that a successful arraigned marriage can help salvage his reputation after the disaster that was Sonali's marriage.
Peter Champion, Anjali's English teacher, recognizes her intelligence and restlessness in Gauripur and strongly encourages Anjali to move to Bangalore even calling it the "new India". He offers to help set Anjali up in Gauripur but Anjali initially turns Peter down as she does not yet see herself ready to move to Bangalore. Circumstance soon forces Anajli to reconsider as she soon goes out with a young man that her father plan to have her marry. While alone with the boy she is brutally raped. Scared to speak out against the young man, she chooses to run away to avoid marrying.
She goes to Peter Champion to accept his earlier offer to set her up in Bangalore. Peter gives her a contact for housing, a contact for a career, and a significant sum of money, fifty thousand rupees, more than Anjali had ever seen let alone handled. To avoid her father, who work at the railway station, Anjali makes the long journey on a bus.
Once she arrives in Bangalore, Anjali is meets a man she calls Mr. GG, who drives her to Peter's contact. She arrives at the Bagehot House, an Anglo-Indian mansion from a long by-gone era of India. The owner, Minne Bagehot, agrees to rent Anjali a room while also vaguely explaining the rules of the house. She meets the house's residents: Hussiena, Sunita, Tookie, and Asoke. After a period that she uses to acclimatize herself to the city, she goes to the Contemporary Communication Institute (CCI) to learn to adopt English so she can become a call center representative. However, at the conclusion of the two-week program that she enrolls in, Peter's contacts, Usha Desai and Parvati Banerji, suggest to Anjali to find a different career.
Anjali returns to the Bagehot house to find that riots have erupted outside the mansion. While looter ransack the home, Anjali finds Minne dead in the bathroom. She shouts to police for help, but when they arrive they arrest Anjali. At the police station, Anjali is interrogated about her relation to a terrorist plot. Anjali finds out that her identity had been stolen by Hussiena. After being booked, Mr. GG comes to arrange Anjali's release. No longer having a place to live, she is taken in by Parvati Banerji.
After the events that lead to her arrest, Anjali is left devastated, losing her confidence and her character. With the help of Mr. GG and Rabi Chatterjee, she begin to find herself again. Anjali is again tested when a break in at Parvati's home by Tookie and some of her friends. Anjali risks herself to defend Parvati's home and property, finally asserting her own strength and independence.
The story closes with Anjali taking an offer from Mr. GG to become a debt-collection agent. In the epilogue, Anjali returns to Gauripur, now a city that has been renewed. She returns as a person of status, visiting Peter Champion to talk with some students.
Bharati Mukherjee's novel was received with generally positive reviews from literary critics. Reviewers praised the representation of India's youth rebelling against tradition. [5] The novel was also praised for its representation of gender, autonomy, and a transforming India. [6] However, some critics found the novel "unfulfilling" as Anjali never fully takes "charge of her destiny". [7] Additionally, some critics expressed frustration at the incompletion of several plot lines and inconsistent themes. [8] Overall, the novel is praised as a good fast-paced story that is a good read for people interested in modern Indian fiction. [9]