No onions nor garlic

And, most dear actors, eat no onions nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath; and do not doubt but to hear them say it is a sweet comedy.

- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream


How refreshing it is to come across a comedy that’s genuinely, unabashedly funny – one that tries to provide belly-laughs on nearly every page and very often succeeds. Srividya Natarajan’s No Onions Nor Garlic was occupying my time along with a couple of other books. But I’m glad I cose to read it first – it’s a manic, immensely entertaining novel.

There’s much in No Onions No Garlic that draws on the work of comic masters of the past. Especiallly, the romantic confusions evoke P G Wodehouse’s Blandings Castle stories ...

Natarajan pulls it off so well, partly because she isn’t just imitating indiscriminately; her book has a style of its own that fits its setting very well. She has a good balance of the rhythms of speech and behaviour, she pokes fun at sacred cows without being mean-spirited about it .

For me, much of the fun of reading this book came from the sense that the author had a lot of fun writing it. I also appreciate the risks that go into carrying off something like this: good comedy is among the hardest things to do, and always so easy to get wrong. Natarajan goes all the way in the final chapter, with an ending that combines slapstick with a parody of lost-and-found scenes in Indian movies and the introduction of a romantic relationship that Wodehouse would have baulked at. It’s wonderfully ticklish, colourful and melodramatic, not all that different in its effect from the final act of a Shakespeare comedy where all the loose ends are tied up.