The Red Helmet
By Deepika Shetty, Sanchit Art Publications, 227 pages, $7.20
To begin with, I was hibernating as far as reading books was concerned. I love to buy books and quite often stock them on my shelves. But, something prompted me to change my behaviour. I guess it was the statutory warning on the book cover: “Cigarette smoking can kill. This book won’t. Please don’t say you weren’t warned.”
“The Red Helmet” is a unique book.
Initially, I thought I would sit, relax and read the book with ease. However, suddenly I found myself thrown into a mad rush with the writer — to reach somewhere.
Deepika Shetty moves the reader from a tumultuous path to a nonchalant road, with some scenes peppered with light humour and others comprising gory scenes of bloodshed.
The protagonist Dimpy’s “never say die” attitude defies the norm of the women who lived in India in the late 1980s and early 1990s. She was nurtured by her grandmother, and despite being two generations apart and torn between two ideologies, still strives to remain the woman she always wanted to be.
The writer’s simplicity and honesty are the primary factors that make this a wonderful read. Her wit in the use of colloquial phrases, and style of weaving a story about a young Indian woman who seems to have everything a 23-year-old would want — freedom, friends and her vehicle giving her the necessary mobility is intriguing. The food references, ranging from Punjabi milky chai to the Shetty’s Kori Roti and bombil curry, are just lip-smacking.
Dimpy dares to hold her ground amid three strange generations and survive by retaining her identity in an age and time when Indian women were struggling to carve a niche in the society.
The infamous Indian “Operation Bluestar” is what I recollected when I read this book. However there is no mention of the brutality the victims faced. Perhaps that should have been covered.
Overall, an amazing motivational story of a young Indian woman who survived the storms of life with strong will power, sheer determination to be the best, and the love of words that pushed her career from a simple bookstore to a leading publishing house, and finally sacrificing all that to be with the love of her life. It was “awesome”.
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