Unfinished, Not a Memoir, Just a Marketing Tool and an Elaborate Thank you Letter!
Priyanka Chopra, can be classified as a successful global celebrity. Winning Miss World beauty pageant in 2000, became a successful Bollywood actress in next 15 years, briefly ventured into the music industry, movie production, entered the Hollywood scene, American television, and became much talked about celebrity marrying the pop singer Nick Jonas. She has been a go-getter, highflier, and overachiever. And you can read all about her inspirational success on her Wikipedia page! No, not in her Memoir;)
A Memoir is an honest
reflection, genuine slice of life of the individual, walking the reader into their
deepest thoughts, vulnerable times, exhilarating or roller coaster moments, in
their journey, and how they made things possible, this makes memoirs
inspirational. These kinds of memoirs you read and re-read and book-mark to
inspire or motivate…… and Unfinished does not fall into this category.
Being an avid reader,
part of multiple book clubs, I am a big fan of the memoir genre, and have read
many over the years. Special recommends
being Michele Obama’s ‘Becoming’ and Tara Westover’s ‘Educated’. When our local library got the new book Unfinished,
we picked it up. No, not a PC fan, but because I have written many a review for her Bollywood movies, Bollywood blah
is in my line of interest, for the love
of memoirs, and a general curiosity.
But this book has
nothing new which has not been written in the magazines or heard in interviews.
I felt her Wikipedia page gave more thorough
detail of her life, while the memoir seems like a superficial and frivolously
written tinted advertisement and marketing tool of herself for the western audiences
who may not know her enough. It comes
out as a PR package to promote her as a brand to invest in her and her entrepreneurial
ventures and goals she elaborates in her memoir!
The book walks you
through her childhood, her Army doctor
parents, posted in different parts of India, her life with grandparents, her boarding school life to discipline her, her short move to live with relatives in USA due
to parents priorities of establishing clinic, her high school in US, her win in
the beauty pageants, her entry into Bollywood
movies, her father’s death, her big fat Indian wedding to Nick Jonas , her philanthropy
and her future endeavors and plans, often going back and forth in flashback
mode like Indian movies, even loosing the trail of thought at times…
The book doesn’t flow
like a story but sounds like a pitch to target audience when it includes passages
and explanations of Indian family traditions, culture, language, wedding
rituals….. it makes her sound like an infomercial with attached google consult.
The second thing
which keeps popping up while you read this book is -it doesn’t read like her
life story, but feels like an elaborate Thank You Letter to all the people who
have entered in Priyankas life and done her some favors…. Either be her many aunts
and uncles, cousins, colleagues or friends.
The only chapters in
the book which show some depth in her story are the chapters –‘Like Water’, and ‘Grief’ . In the ‘Like Water’ chapter, she
shares her father’s wisdom to adapt to new places “Be like water…find the best situation
wherever you are and make it work” and her boarding school life as 8-9 year
old. In ‘Grief’ she talks about her father’s illness, death and loss. Her
parents seemed to have been her strongest support, campaigners and champions in
her success.
For whatever reasons
the book was obviously written and published in a hurry. The book ‘Unfinished’
also seems ‘unedited’. Technically it’s not written, but it looks like audio narrated
brain dumps using speech-to-text. The
advantage of this method is the story is conversational and it’s a time saver. But
the disadvantage is if not well edited it shows in the script. The sentences
show ill-formedness with syntactic errors. As an educator who has edited too
many essays it blatantly glares when this technology is used for writing.
After reading
memoirs over the years, I have connected, understood, related, felt empathetic,
inspired, or been in awe of the author of the memoirs. Strangely, Unfinished didn’t
give any feelings because of its superficial, controlled and unemotional
narrative. Irrespective of Priyanka being a 38 year successful woman, she comes
off as a giddy teenager and fell flat to my expectations. But like she said, she is unfinished…. I am hoping
she will have some better things ahead!
............
Side Discussions:
My father sang in
temples, mosques, sikh gurdwaras and churches….. This line in her book triggered a question by Oprah Winfrey in her interview with Priyanka Chopra.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRCSZVvq7VE
Oprah: Did you have a
spiritual foundation growing up.
Priyanka: Yes, due to to the swirling number of
religions in India you are ….. I went to catholic school, I was aware of Christianity,
my dad sang in mosques, I was aware of Islam, I grew up in a Hindu family I was
aware of Hinduism......
The controversial
answer got trolled on twitter with major criticism for her frivolous answer in the interview and unresearched writing in the book..... How many people can say their understanding of
religion, be it Christianity or Islam or Hinduism comes from such superficial scenarios! And to add to the
controversy she said her father sang in mosques which doesn’t happen. The only
singing which happens is in a dargah which is a Sufi shrine/cemetery of some
saintly human. People with limited
knowledge gained from movies confuse a dargah for a mosque! (since dargahs and qawwali songs are often depicted in Bollywood movies). Where as a Mosque is a Muslim place
of worship like a church or temple.
