Breaking stereotypes in New York

They call themselves the G gang, short for Ganpat gang, named after the song Aye Ganpat from the movie Shootout at Lokhandwala. Neel, Shri (Shrikant) and Shanks (Sankar), best friends since college in Mumbai, are leading the good life in New York, determined to turn themselves into proper Manhattanites. It isn’t difficult. They’re in their 20s, single, independent of their families and earning well. They’re also entrenched in the world of finance that makes Manhattan what it is. Neel is a hedge fund trader, Shri a banker and Shanks a techie with a financial firm. What else could three young men want?

Any young man could answer that question. The only thing these people could want would be that nothing would change, ever. But of course that never happens.
It begins when Shri meets Shefali, the daughter of a diamond merchant from Antwerp, who’s in New York to try and find a career in fashion journalism. Shefali isn’t trying very hard. She’s lived on a generous allowance all her life, and is seldom awake before noon. Work seems like something other people do. Still, she’s bright, tenacious and good hearted, and becomes a member of the gang almost at once, partly because of a not-quite-the-real-thing relationship with classically good looking Neel and partly because of a sibling-like relationship with Shri who finds in her a Bollywood-aware, fashion-forward partner.

Shanks, meanwhile, has fallen in love. Naturally, it’s with a girl his widowed mother would consider completely unsuitable — not only a non Tam Brahm, but also non Indian. A Chinese girl, in fact.
Shri has fallen in love, too. But his conflict is much more difficult to reconcile. Shri, it turns out, is gay. Or, as he knows his parents will put it, “a gay homosexual”. He’s known this since he was in school, but has managed to hide it successfully from everyone, including his two best friends, by the simple expedient of never acting on his desires ever, not even in private. Now he’s met a man he could love. Will he be able to tell his parents?

And Neel. Oh, Neel. Incredibly personable, charming and good looking, Neel has never been short of women in his life. But he’s also never quite been in love. He knows he’s turned on by money, so he’s long decided to give his heart to cash. But then he meets Layla, a siren of a woman, and Neel has never felt about any woman the way he feels about her. Is Layla good for Neel though?

Questions, questions, questions. The only way to find answers is to turn the page and turn the page and turn the page till you get to the end. So I guess that means Manhattan Mango qualifies for ye olde book review cliché: it’s a page-turner of a novel. That’s because it’s a well-written book with an easy sense of humour. It’s that which makes you keep turning pages, because there’s very little in Manhattan Mango that you haven’t read elsewhere before.

Kushalrani Gulab dreams of being a sanyasi by the sea with a huge library of books to read and write about.
She blogs at tomeofmylife.blogspot.in