Unfinished, Not a Memoir, Just a Marketing Tool and an Elaborate Thank you Letter!

 

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!

  

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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.