No stranger to strangers

Gouri Dange is no stranger to strangers. Over the years, the writer and family counsellor has poured out advice in her newspaper columns to people she’s never met. Dange’s second book The Counsel of Strangers is a collection of six stories, narrated simply by six people who meet at a resort. They are there to attend a wedding party, but would rather be anywhere else. They unexpectedly find themselves sharing a hiding place: a viewing gallery overlooking a forest. Here the veneer of normalcy drops. For want of anything else to do, they share their stories, putting the spotlight on their vulnerability and the emotions that are hollowing them inside out.

The Counsel of Strangers 
Gouri Dange; Omo Books; Rs 250

There is the retired Wing Commander Brahme who found true love but lost her. The teenaged Kartik is worried about his “bad-ass” brother and the fact that he himself is too “good-ass”. Anandi-Mohini has two first names, one divorce and a second chance that feels all wrong. Shail Baig, a once-famous newscaster, is shattered by his fall from grace. Sajani, a nurse, has taken care of others all her life, but realises she cannot take care of her own suicidal tendencies. Ambika Natarajan’s intelligent son does the unthinkable and becomes a filmmaker.

Full review here Timeout Mumbai

"I was bored to tears at weddings"

In her latest novel, The Counsel of Strangers, Gouri Dange places a motley group of six in her own personal nightmare situation — an Indian wedding. Ranging from 14 to 71 in age, and each equipped with personal baggage, they find refuge, and confidantes, in a viewing gallery far from the maddening crowd. In an interview with DNA, Dange offers her candid opinion on a few subjects…

On disastrous weddings: I could have chosen an airport lounge as the setting of my novel but the quintessential ‘Big Fat Indian Weddings’ are everywhere and I have personally been to so many where I was bored to tears.

On being a ‘people watcher’: I see many things and then file them away in my mind. In my earlier novel, 3, Zakia Mansion, I used a phrase I overheard at an Udupi Cafe. Two young girls were discussing relationships and one of them said to the other, ‘You should always have your jerk meter prepared’. I love that term — jerk meter. I use it even today.

On a family counselor’s family problems: I face problems regularly. It’s like how doctors are not immune to being ill. I have many coping strategies like friends.

The Ccounsel of strangers

Gauri Dange’s contemporaneous turn of phrase lends a frothy wit to the sweet-sour stories of six guests who meet at a wedding. There is Karthik—brother of bad-ass Vishwas; the love-lorn Wing Commander Brahme; journalist Sahil Baig and so on. In one night of bonding, they sustain each other till the epilogue, by when the book develops the emotional substance of a novella.

These are regular people—the professor unable to come to terms with her Bollywood scriptwriter son, the Muslim TV reporter fallen from grace—grappling with the wear and tear of ordinary lives. There are no resolutions—only a way to deal with life’s ambiguities. Dange reminds you that all you have in your power is your response to a situation, not the situation itself, be it Anandi Mohini’s choice of life-partners, or Nurse Sajini’s ‘service’ in her brother’s home. All in all, Dange’s people-watching has paid off.

Full review here Outlook

Romance in San Francisco

Gouri Dange’s ‘The Counsel of Strangers’ maps the lives of six people who meet at a wedding. One of them finds love at 73

The Counsel of Strangers
Gouri Dange
OMO Books, Rs 250, Pp 172

I found myself lying, yes bare-faced lying, to my own daughter so smoothly the next morning.

“Dad it’s Saturday morning, where are you off to?” she asked. “Those Brahmakumari people visit the old on the third Saturday; they’re coming to see you.”

I first spoke the truth, and then told the lie.

“Please, beta, it’s very late for me to be saved by any Brahmos.” I stopped myself in time from calling them ‘Brahmos Missiles’ (that’s India’s supersonic cruise missile; we made it with the Russians). My daughter had once rapped me on the knuckles for that joke.

Now I could hear the edge in her voice: “This is not the Christian church—they’re not ‘saving’ anyone, Dad. I wish you would listen. It’s just part of their outreach to the Hindu community here, dad.”

“Well then I want to stay out of their reach,” I said, still trying to laugh my way out of this.

Full review here Mint