Indians are always looking for reasons to be proud of ourselves. If your faith in our innate ‘best-ness’ wavers then, there are countless Whatsapp forwards to remind you that you are, in fact, the best.
More raging proof of our greatness shines through data released by Amazon India, which revealed that Chetan Bhagat’s One Indian Girl is the highest selling book of 2016. He even beat JK Rowling’s Harry Potter And The Cursed Child in popularity this year, you guys.
The same data also ranked Delhi as the most well-read city in India, but we wouldn’t bring out the party hats and streamers yet, folks. If reading One Indian Girl won you that title, you need to re-evaluate your life.
Getting back to the highest selling book this year, you’ll recall this is the same novel that aimed to mansplain feminism to Indian audiences. Bhagat was so committed to portraying feminism in the right light, he got himself waxed in order to understand the pain women go through.
This information makes us wary of people who list ‘love reading books’ in their Twitter/Instagram bios and then reveal a timeline full of Honey Singh remixes. In other words, the occupants of your Facebook messenger’s ‘Others’ folder.
Before you pick up your pitchforks and deem us anti-national, we get that you’re entitled to your own opinion and what you read is strictly your own business. Still, this celebration of mediocrity is just one more example of how 2016 really was the year from hell.
