A review by shelleyrae
Miss New India by Bharati Mukherjee

3.0

Stifled by tradition and expectation, nineteen year old Anjali accepts the help of an unconventional professor to escape an arranged marriage and her small town of Gauripaur in rural India. She dreams of a new life in Bangalore, perhaps with a successful career or a Bollywood style romance but the reality is not what she expects. Boarding in a crumbling mansion, Angali's megawatt smile and passable American English do not provide the advantages she has hoped. Painfully naive, she falls victim to her ruthless housemates as her illusions shatter around her.
Set in contemporary Indian society, Miss New India is an interesting insight into the changing culture of the country with it's increased share of the global market due to Western outsourcing. Customer Support Agencies (ie. call centers) train their employees to speak 'accentless' English and embrace an American/English identity inflating it's value against the traditional Indian culture. For many of those raised in marginal castes or regions the new employment opportunities (and high pay) offered are an irresistible lure and for women like Mukherjee's character, Anjali, a way to escape family expectations and earn independence.
I'm really not sure if Anjali's character and her experiences are intended to act as a warning, or encouragement for the young women of India searching for a career. The consequence of Anjali's fleeing from her home, after rejecting an arranged marriage, is her father's suicide/death and permanent estrangement from her mother and sister. Almost immediately after her arrival in Bangalore, Anjali is out of her depth and simply sinks further into trouble, mostly as a result of her own naivety. It is her female housemates, women who purport to work in the call center industry, that betray her and she is rescued repeatedly by men who have standing in Indian society. Initially I was sympathetic to Anjali's situation and her determination to make her own way but I felt she was quickly revealed to be quite weak and I lost interest in her struggle.
I also felt the plot was overcrowded with issues, Anjali becomes involved in rape, a Muslim terrorist plan, riots, a ring of thieves and prostitutes. I thought the impact of the call centers on Indian society and individual identity was an interesting enough theme to carry the novel without all the extra complications.
The language is good, though I thought it a bit dense at times. Mukherjee integrates a lot of information about Indian culture that I found interesting, like the myriad of spoken dialects and class structure, but it does tend to clutter the story. Initially the pace is a little quiet but becomes frenzied as events and characters trips over each other in the last third of the story.
There is a lot to like and learn from this novel yet I really found it slow going. Miss New India is a novel that leaves me in a quandary of indecision, so I think it's best to leave any definitive recommendation out.