New Delhi: Imagine having to work with a boss from hell who expects you to fetch her Starbucks coffee (with two raw sugars, mind you), deliver her designer laundry home, book her for a lunch at an imaginary restaurant, run all kinds of fools' errands all while you run around in tight, leather Gucci jeans delicately balancing your sanity, your personal life and your body in the three-inch Manolos heels.
Phew! And that’s all in a day’s work.
But before you run out of breath, here's a caution: The Devil Wears Prada is all of this and much more.
A breezy read, much in line with the current chic-lit genre, the Lauren Weisberger novel revolves around Andrea Sachs, a young journalism grad who comes to New York when she's hired at Runway - US' most sought-after fashion magazine - as the assistant to its formidable, feared and fawned-over editor-in-chief Miranda Priestly.
She joins Runway for what she considers a one-year servitude, hoping to climb up the ladder of professional success and finally end up as a writer at the prestigious newspaper The New Yorker.
Far from that. Andrea learns that though she can bill anything from cars to designer clothes to a private jet to the Runway account, she has to be at Miranda's disposal 24*7.
Whether it is hiring a private jet to fly a set of yet-to-be released Harry Potters to Paris at one-hour notice to ensuring that Miranda's Chanel evening gown is delivered wrinkle-free, Andrea has quite a task at hand.
Day after day, as Andrea tolerates her mercurial boss's barrage of snide remarks and unreasonable demands, sits through self-deprecating sessions about being "overweight" with anorexic and narscissitic co-workers, she also learns some of the most important lessons of high life.
PAGE_BREAK
She learns that it's sacrilege to be dressed in anything non-designer and a sacking offence to be caught dead in jeans and sneakers.
As the obsessively control-freak Miranda makes life a living nightmare for Andrea (rather, Ahn-dre-ah as she calls her in her 'propah' Brit accent), the writer in her loses soul, faster than she realises.
Her best friend meets with a near-fatal accident and her boyfriend dumps her at 3 am for being too busy, but Andrea dare not delay Miranda's lunch for the fear of being kicked out.
But this is where the novel scores. While you can feel Andrea's nervous energy and living-on-the-edge lifestyle, you as a reader are never fatigued.
However, there are times when one does begin to wonder if the characterisation of Miranda as the typical "career-bitch" is too stereotypical.
She is the quintessential careerist who cannot live happily, cannot manage a husband and kids and ends up being a sadist.
One also wonders as to how a woman who can't remember what paper she read in the morning can head a top fashion magazine.
Apart from this, The Devil Wears Prada scintillates. In all its good humour, it manages to take a satirical look at the sheer frivolity and shallowness of the high-life a lot of label-obsessed youngsters aspire for, slightly reminiscent of the Bollywood hit Page 3.
Comments
0 comment