Being unladylike

Radhika Vaz’s memoir looks at sensitive subjects and difficult phases in a woman’s life — like teenage woes, losing virginity, desperation to get married — through a filter of humour

What was the big deal about losing it For one thing, it wasn’t even a particularly useful, or visible body part, like a foot. If I lost my foot, everyone would notice and I wouldn’t be able to wear Nike high-tops. If I lost my virginity, on the other hand, nobody would notice and I would continue to wear Nike high-tops.”

With a couple of lines as these, Radhika Vaz manages to write off a sensitive subject like virginity, in a country where a film that uses the word could find it hard to get a UA certificate. These are lines from her memoir where the comedian has chosen to reveal that side of hers which, she says in her introduction, she is not exactly proud about. “I am proud of the book, but not always proud about myself. I swing between being very proud and then not being proud,” she laughs and you hear the joy of a person who can easily laugh and make laugh.

Radhika’s book is characteristically titled Unladylike. But then she goes on to write about her teen years and 20s where she acts ‘desperate to get married’, a phase she finds disgusting but that wouldn’t be uncommon with ‘other ladies of her country’. “At least some readers would feel that is exactly how they are behaving and they don’t need to feel bad about it.”

That had been difficult to write. So were the growing up years in a boarding school. “Writing about it means you have to remember it again. But then there was humour in it.” And humour is exactly what she has in the book.

“Being a comedian, people pick up my book because they feel it’s funny. I am not the one to bring beautiful prose. But I can tell a story and I can make it funny.” She has been writing for her stand-up shows, and she had to write when she had a job in advertising. So writing is not new to her. It was, in fact, an idea that came from her project manager in New York. “‘Write a book, it doesn’t have to be great,’ she told me,” says Radhika. And she wrote when her editor in New Delhi said they should do something together. And now that she has written it, she hopes she can write another.