Anuja Chauhan

When the younger players in India's cricket team find out that advertising executive Zoya Singh Solanki was born at the very moment India won the World Cup back in 1983, they are intrigued. When having breakfast with her is followed by victories on the field, they are impressed. And when not eating with her results in defeat, they decide she's a lucky charm. The nation goes a step further. Amazed at the ragtag team's sudden spurt of victories, it declares her a Goddess. So when the eccentric IBCC president and his mesmeric, always-exquisitely-attired Swamiji invite Zoya to accompany the team to the tenth ICC World Cup, she has no choice but to agree. Pursued by international cricket boards on the one hand, wooed by Cola majors on the other, Zoya struggles to stay grounded in the thick of the world cup action. And it doesn't help that she keeps clashing with the erratically brilliant new skipper who tells her flatly that he doesn't believe in luck...

The Zoya Factor

Pepper

Zoya's waaaaay too self-obsessed, insecure, needlessly contrary and casually callous I thought as I read the book. But then I thought, so what. The way Anuja's heroines are is really just a frank reflection of today's desensitized+delusional India after all. The great thing about her heroines is that they are so... unbelievably ethically and emotionally questionable, and yet they somehow manage to retain the reader's interest in them, if not their sympathy. In any case the heroes seem to succumb to their charms fairly early on - while the readers in turn fall for them. And why not? The heroes in Anjua's books are so nice that even if you try to be suspicious of their motives it's only a half-hearted attempt. When they get grumpy you traitorously curse the girl rather than the guy, never mind thoughts of solidarity for your own gender. Poor Nikhil Khoda - how does he put up with her I kept thinking throughout the book (sorry Zoya :P). 

The idiosyncratic ensemble cast that Anuja gathers to support or oppose her heroines are so memorably etched out that you can practically visualise Bollywood character actors playing them as you read their scenes. That pista-shell shedding Lokey for example - I couldn't help but hear Saurabh Shukla delivering his dialogues every time he came on-page. 

Anuja's books are irreplicable and inventive I reckon - no other contemporary Indian author can write things that *should* sound totally ludicrous ...in a manner that feels completely real-life-like. Many's the moment where you will go "it happens only in Indiya!". In fact, I have to declare my ishqwala love for how things continually go from the ridiculous to the absurd in Anuja's books. Upar se all those I-think-my-heart-vessles-are-about-to-burst-with-tension type gripping lead ups to the climatic highs and those can't-quite-stop-grinning and laugh-out-loud denouements that follow - totally fida-worthy material. 

p.s. I'm waxing all eloquent here yet dishing out only 3 stars because Battle For Bittora totally spoilt me. Having read AC's 2nd book first I can't help but feel this one was a bit less awesome, but only a bit. Can't wait to read Those Pricey Thakur Girls to see whether it blows BFB out of the well or what. 

p.p.s. My thoughts on BFB here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Madhuri Gubbala

Kritika Narula

Ivy Vatsala

When the younger players in Indias cricket team find out that advertising executive Zoya Singh Solanki was born at the very moment India won the World Cup back in 1983, they are intrigued. When having breakfast with her is followed by victories on the field, they are impressed. And when not eating with her results in defeat, they decide shes a lucky charm. The nation goes a step further. Amazed at the ragtag teams sudden spurt of victories, it declares her a Goddess. So when the eccentric IBCC president and his mesmeric, always-exquisitely-attired Swamiji invite Zoya to accompany the team to the tenth ICC World Cup, she has no choice but to agree. Pursued by international cricket boards on the one hand, wooed by Cola majors on the other, Zoya struggles to stay grounded in the thick of the world cup action. And it doesnt help that she keeps clashing with the erratically brilliant new skipper who tells her flatly that he doesnt believe in luck…

The Zoya Factor

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