The Happy Associate - free download

The Happy Associate (Tranquebar, Rs. 150) is the book we should scratch each other’s eye out to get our hands on. It’s vicious, hilarious take on Delhi and it’s hair-gelled, paneer sushi-munching denizens. Author Urja has taken an electric snapshot of middle-class Dilliwallas through the eyes of Kirti a.k.a. underdog(“When I first overhead it. I told myself that it sounded cool. Like an American rapper’s name.”). our hero is a “twenty-six-year-old dude, fair-skinned and slender” who is an associate in a Delhi accounting firm(“the kind of firm with expensive sculptures, girls in suit-boot, and tax deals in billions”). He’s a small-town guy with roots “in a bright bowl of north India where the holy tulsi grows” with big city aspirations. Kirti’s life is all about manoeuvring through office parties, games of Scrabble, speaking bad Hindi( “this makes them assume that I am so comfortable with English, that I am shaky with Hindi”) – and impressing Mandira Rastogi. Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho-meets-Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!