Amara Joshi, a thirty-four-year-old divorcee lives in Rishikesh with her parents, sister Tamara and an unmarried aunt Meena. Everyone calls her "Laddo" at home, and she liked to be called so. Laddo is a journalist and working in a stable and high paying job. The only thing she wants in her life is a child. She does everything in her control to improve her fertility rate, but her ticking biological clock doesn't stop. She then visits a gynaecologist and finds out that she doesn't have much time since her eggs are drying up. The only option she has is to find a sperm donor for herself, and then the search begins. Doing all this, she receives a lot of resistance from her mother, insults from her neighborhood, stares at her work, and even her dilemma makes her think about the hardships of being a divorcee, single motherhood and loneliness.
This book felt like a film. I completed it in a go. The characters are super fun, and the story has a millennium touch. Ladoo's sister Tamara and her best friend "four ten' (410) makes this book so much fun with their antics. Ladoo's bua (aunt) creates a hilarious scene in fertility hospital by bringing a pandit to match the kundalis of Ladoo and her sperm donor.
While this book entertains you and makes you laugh, it also tackles important topics like taboos around women bodies, pregnancy, parenthood, male and female friendship etc. Some additional issues this book addresses are the problematic nursery rhymes, myths around social media as a career option, male's biological clock, and how people look at unconventional pregnancies. I am just amazed at how Meghana Pant covered so many things in a fun way. Because this is some serious business, and it's tough to write a comedy book around these topics. Nowhere I felt like any issue is dismissed in the name of comedy. Kudos to the author for that.
This book is going to be a major motion movie soon with the title #badnamladoo, and honestly, I can't wait to watch this movie now. I even have a potential cast in my mind, but let's see.