When Dimple Met Rishi (Review)

TITLE: When Dimple Met Rishi

AUTHOR: Sandhya Menon

RATING: 5*
GENRE: Young Adult

Summary: Dimple Shah lives under the strict rule of her parents, with her mother's voice mostly winning out in arguments. All she wants to do is attend Stanford after a summer camp where she can develop an app and possibly meet her idol, Jenny Lindt. Rishi Patel is a traditional Indian son. He follows his parents ideals and agrees to go to the same summer camp, just to meet the girl his parents have set him up with for a potential future marriage. But when they initially crash and then find happiness amidst the camp where they find a similar goal, they also find themselves.

"This is our life. We get to decide the rules. We get to say what goes and what stays, what matters and what doesn't." What matters to Dimple is her life and her own choices. That's all she ever wants: her own choice. Where her parents want her to find the Ideal Indian Husband in college, Dimple wants to go to learn web development and follow her dreams, not just go for romance. She's not even interested in that aspect of her future. At the start of the story, these dreams are met with great resistance. But eventually, they relent and allow her to go. The reader thinks that they've finally realised their daughter's dreams.

"That's what you think I should be relagating my brain space to?... Like, if I don't make the effort to look beautiful, my entire existence is nullified? Nothing else matters--not my intellect, not my personality... my hopes and dreams mean nothing if I'm not wearing eyeliner?" What made me pick up this book was the culture I knew I'd find in it. I'd not long read The Sun is Also a Star which made me aware of how much diversity in culture is needed in young adult books. So when I saw When Dimple Met Rishi, I needed that sort of exposure. What Sandhya Menon does is something uncommon. Not only does she write about Indian culture in her book but she strays against tradition with her female protagonist. Dimple is quirky, short-tempered and not afraid to stand up for herself when she meets Rishi. She's not afraid to be different or herself. She's strong and won't adhere to the image other people want her to be, even those who don't even know her.

"She refused to be one of those girls who gave up on everything they'd been planning simply because a boy entered the picture." Dimple and Rishi meet before Insomnia Con even officially starts. Due to one poor joke about their future, Rishi immediately destroys any hope of any sort of attachment and gets a shower in Dimple's coffee. For most, this was the moment they fell in love with Dimple. For me, it was when she stood up against her mum in the first few pages; it was finding out she had a love for web development. As someone who had a mum who wanted me to wear a bit more makeup a couple of years ago, I sympathised with Dimple for her reasons of not wanting to. She didn't want to impress boys; she just wanted to live her life for herself. She didn't want every choice she made to be for boys or an ideal romance. She just wanted her own life and ambitions. Her mother didn't understand the concept of looking a certain way for yourself.

"I feel like I need to speak out, because if no one speaks out, if no one says 'this is me, this is what I believe in, and this is why I'm different, and this is why it's okay', then what's the point?" The moment I fell in love with Rishi was when he took her to the store with the buddha statue; he'd already scoped places out. He'd already followed his love for his culture to find a place he'd feel at home. Rishi is a boy who seems to consider everything and everyone. He's so unabashed in his background when other people try to make him feel ashamed for it.

"If you always look like you're going to bite them, beti, no boys are ever going to want to talk to you." Throughout the book, Indian terms are specified. They made me pick up my phone and search for them to get a better understanding of what Dimple wore, makeup terms, food, and researched to understand the family terms used. This really opened my eyes to something that is seriously missing from most young adult books. Readers of young adult are diverse as well and they need that ability to relate. Not everything is about rich, straight, white people. And the ones that are in this book are typical, which I actually liked. Celia, Dimple's camp roommate, is bisexual and black, and she has her own character development. Everything central is this book is on diverse characters and that's what makes it so important.

"But that was Rishi... He was like a pop song you thought you couldn't stand, but found yourself humming it in the shower anyway." The other importance of this novel is the development of endurance Dimple experiences towards Rishi, from wanting him to go home immediately, to finally feeling for him. Without meaning to, I think Dimple fell in love with him, despite how they clashed at the start. The ambition in her found the smothered ambition in him with his art. Rishi buried the fact that he lived his art in order to be the son his parents wanted and needed. He was willing to follow an future he'd not even chosen before Dimple showed him how much he couldn't just keep art as his hobby with how much it lived in him. There's a really beautiful scene at a party where Rishi goes up against another artist and Dimple finally sees why he can't have his art as a hobby. The description is something so incredibly stunning that I closed the book for a few minutes, just to live in it before moving on.

"He wondered if he should feel a stab of jealousy... but all he felt was this warm, almost gooey feeling in his chest." Ashish, Rishi's brother, is also a character who gets great development. He goes from being the annoying younger brother with no responsibilities to the reason that Dimple and Rishi win the talent competition within the camp, something fun before the winning app gets decided. He practices with them, and through that, Celia and he get their own sub-story, in which he stands up massively for her against the rich, white boys. He becomes more level-headed with Rishi with the problems start happening and the final argument against going after his heart.

"She'd say this for him: he had no guile." What I adored about this book was that passion is never sought out by themselves in the end. Both Dimple and Rishi go behind each other's backs to prove to their respective idols how amazing their work is. That causes so many problems but it was something I loved. It was something relatable, especially Rishi's. When he meets his idol, he loses the nerve to show him his artwork. He plays it off because he can't handle the weight of the possibility. Ambition and the future is important in this story, something I've thoroughly enjoyed reading in relation to such incredibly-written characters.

When Dimple Met Rishi is truly a gift, so much that I wrote this messy book review for it in an attempt to convey my love for it. Sandhya Menon has started something beautiful and I can't wait for anything more she writes to follow her style with.

Writing - It Doesn't Always Work.

Sadly, that title isn't a lie, as I've recently discovered. On the 16th August, I finished drafting my Alice novel, Mad Rebellion. I flew through that draft, as far as speed goes for me. The problem? I couldn't turn off my brain, even when I was getting strain and stress headaches. I'd been editing and writing like crazy, getting up to 6,000 words a day. My usual is 2-3K but I was so full of that story that I had so much to pour into it. I couldn't switch off my brain long enough to recover from the last writing session before I started again.

But I finished it; I never ate the morning I did because I couldn't tear myself away from my laptop even for a second. My entire body ached from the tension of the ending. That was a story that I was so encompassed in and worked for me. The next day, I began drafting a new story, having finished editing another story for my critique partners. For the time being, I couldn't do more on anything but this new story that I'd been planning for a while.

EVERYTHING AROUND US is my first try at a serious contemporary. It's my recovery and survival story; it's encouraging not only my characters to find beauty in the world but for me to do the same. I'm using one of my loves, film, to add to it and explore each character's creativity. There are five central characters and I thought I could write them all. It started off with only Nicholas and Hazel leading this story--but then Ailee, Stuart and Hank all asked for their stories to be told at least once from their perspective. They wanted to share how they came to find out about the film club that brings them altogether. I sat at my laptop for four hours yesterday, trying to continue with writing it. The problem? It wasn't working. The characters that wanted to be central too needed to be secondary.

When planning new ideas, I think over a story for a while before moving it into my I Will Definitely Write This list. It moves from my brain into my notebook; it gets content and surroundings. That's how I make things work usually, because the story has had time to steep and become a fixed part of my need to write it. So I wrote and it felt halted and bland and I wondered why. Then I realised that although my extra voices wanted to be heard from their own perspective, they didn't need to be. I realised it wasn't working because I was trying to put too many voices in, whilst trying out a different way of writing--in both the sense of genre and voice. I've written three manuscripts in the third person and now I'm trying first person, in a genre far away from fantasy, as I'm used to.

Everything is different and I'm finding it hard to adapt to that but for me, this is a story I both want and need to tell. It's something I want to share.

Sometimes, stories don't work out, and that's fine. It's fine because there are so many other stories out there to be told instead, that do work for you, that do make you fire away on the keyboard like nothing else exists. I'm not yet giving up on this story because it's living in my mind and notebook so much that I can't let go, but I need to take out the extra voices and see where I go from there. When I realised it wasn't working for me yesterday, it took me a long time to get out of the mindset of not being good enough to write this story, that maybe I needed to open up to a collaboration, and just find the problem rather than blame my actual skills. I've pin-pointed the three issues I'm finding: genre, voice, person.

I just need to work out the voices that are going to tell this story, the ones who need to tell it most. I'm not used to going past two view-points in my stories and now I'm throwing in five, with a new genre to try at. It's too much, so I need to tone down my idea and focus how I can easily tell EVERYTHING AROUND US going back to my initial idea of it just being Nicholas and Hazel, and its how they see everyone around them.

Love Yourself.

Let me tell you something about confidence: it's not something you learn to have and then get to keep forever. It's slippery and unreliable. It's not always there when you need it but once you know what it feels like, it has the power to come back. Confidence is a tricky thing; its the fine line between boosting yourself to amazing heights or dragging you down to horrible depths. It either helps or it doesn't. Sometimes its a raging war in your own head, wanting to feel a lot more positive but there's a tiny voice saying you're not worth it.

Confidence and self-love have always been things in short supply for me. I could never get past the fact that I was always second-best or not worth a voice. Being spoken over for years tends to provide that opinion. It wasn't until I was sixteen when I first learnt to smile honestly at my reflection and thinking who looked back at me was worth feeling confident of. I rose and rose, out from the depths of feeling less than average, finally ridding myself of that lovely phrase, "I'm ugly." For me, college did wonders for my confidence. I explored thoroughly with style, looks, and my own talents. I found that in the class I attended, I had a voice that was often worth listening to. I found that I could be funny and laugh with people. I was valued there and had a place that I could look forward to being in.

But I got some comments in my last year of college. They took place outside, from someone I trusted wholly, and that was what had me sliding right back down that hill I'd worked to climb up. My face was criticized beyond what I could help and I was pointedly compared to someone who appreciated their features in the same way they put mine down. I was negatively commented on my style (which I thought I'd found) and eventually lost myself in that whirl of self-hate those comments ignited. I became obsessed with changing things I shouldn't have been able to change. I'd check my face everyday, hoping to find something more beautiful there. At the same time, I wondered why I let those comments affect me so much--but we're human; we're sensitive at times so things do hurt. I laughed whenever someone told me I was beautiful because all I could hear was that echo of comments telling me all my flaws. I became incredible self-deprecating in such a critical way.

But bit by bit, I saw a change in how I viewed myself. A change I liked but also hated because I'd clung onto that negativity enough to acknowledge and do something about it when I should have shrugged those words off and loved myself regardless of what I didn't have. I became more serious about how I appeared to people, more self-conscious of what people said about me. Again, my style changed because I feared I looked silly. Still, through that, something broke through barriers and told me that I shouldn't care what others think to that extent.

Through that, I climbed up a higher hill to finally smile once more at myself and say, "Yes, I can be attractive." I got myself away from the person who gave me such negativity and learnt to enclose myself in confidence. Again, it's slippery some days but I'm at a point now where I can say to people: "I learnt how to love myself the hard way. I learnt that by acknowledging someone else's opinion of me that wasn't love. Adhering to other people's perception of beauty isn't worth it; you only need to feel what you do and change according to yourself and nobody else."

I still have confidence issues but they're nowhere near the drastic low they used to be. I got support in my lack of it and slowly learnt to know that even if my reflection was flawed then it's okay. I searched for perfection long before I realised it doesn't exist. I searched to get rid of who I used to be, that person shrouded in negativity, and let another me rise up to take their place. I get laughed at now for taking so many selfies but that's because I'm finally at a level where I can stand to see myself on a picture so I use that as much as I can. If I feel good about myself, I capture it. If I don't, I still capture it and then write down why in order to work on banishing those thoughts.

Loving yourself isn't a walk in the park or something that comes easy to most people. It's not just for appearance; it works for talents too. I've been writing for years and I stepped out of a shadow and found my own world to work in and finally have the ability and confidence to say "I'm talented and could actually make something of this." There are still times when I think that I'm only a good writer on the surface but I constantly develop that when those thoughts creep in. If my lack of confidence affects something I can change, I'll work on it healthily. If I can't, I have to leave it and learn to look past it to the amazing person I know can be underneath my own thoughts.

There are still times when I can't help but compare but I told my sister that comparisons are the most destructive thing ever, because you'll keep making more and never be happy. Your only comparison is you, and who you want to be. Imagine yourself and not anyone else. Imagine only changeable things and don't chase them to a point of hating yourself. You're beautiful and worthy of feeling confident and loving yourself. You deserve self-love and to smile encouragingly at everything you do.

Creating Characters and Who They Are.

To me, when writing, the characters usually come first. Not in the way of a name or how they look, but usually how they feel and the first action I can see them doing. I wrote HARROW CITY based on me sitting on a balcony alone, wishing I could dive into the swimming pool below. That was the start of that entire story idea. From there I pictured a girl, far from me, who was alone because she was trapped and the room behind her was her prison. Developing that, I created my witch-heir, Nova, and then Tollen, the magician, simply followed.

When I first thought about writing IMPERIAL INFILTRATION, I could imagine a servant girl moving around a dining table, collecting dishes and talking with other staff. She was small yet part of something bigger in the palace she worked at. I knew her sister had left but there was the rumour of that sister returning, but not as Aritha knew her. The names came after I had the image of that scene because I knew who I wanted my younger sister of the two to be, why she was there and what she was facing.

Upon that story taking shape, I took pieces of my own experience to better understand Aritha and what she was feeling having lost her sister. I created Aritha to be a stronger version of what I wanted to be. She'd been grieving, broken and lost, with nowhere else to turn but give herself up to a life of a servant, but she still went on. I tweeted the other day, jokingly, that I wanted a tattoo saying, "What would Aritha do?" because despite everything, she's my strong character. Her sister, Reya, is the praised one, carrying their legendary name better, going further places, but Aritha battles every day just to stay upright in the harsh conditions of the palace kitchens, serving and working. What would Aritha do? She'd take a deep breath and go on.

I'm planning a story called EVERYTHING AROUND US and some characters will be battling with something they need to overcome within themselves. I'll write them broken but then I'll write them becoming stronger. I write my characters in similar situations I've been in, in the barest sense, and then see how they overcome them to draw on that.

I don't entirely create a character off someone because once you start dropping those sorts of hints, everyone is all, "So if I'm this character, then who is this person in real life?" and that gets super annoying. But if their story fits (what I've already created) with something I know I can see and experience, I'll take a little piece of that and drop it into them.

Each of my characters represents something for me to follow and explore. Aritha shows determination that I can write when I feel like I'm losing my own. Reya is the personification of searching for something bigger and following dreams. In HARROW CITY, Nova shows being trapped in her own world and wanting to break free but being unable to, watching everyone else go about their lives when she can't. She can only remember the Before in her story. Tollen represents wanting to be someone else when he's been forced into a mould of what other people wanted him to be. He finds the strength inside of himself to break free from that.

I won't go on with a character until I can know their initial thoughts and situation. Sometimes, I see that it's something from their past and I write that down until I can pave the way forward. Other times, I see them building up from what tried to knock them down and work backwards, finding what that thing was.

Basically, I use my characters when I've fixed them in their place in a story to explore their lives and to find inspiration to go on myself.