In the gurukul system in ancient India, the shishyas, as part of their training, had to perform chores in their guru’s house. So, after years of diligence, if you master the Rig Veda (and with luck the Kamasutra), you would also have added to your résumé the capability to tend cows and if domestically inclined, the skill to lay out a mean buffet of forest fruits and herbs. Lauren Weisberger’s bestseller The Devil Wears Prada, inspired by the author’s stint under Vogue’s Anna Wintour, has a similar theme, with some minor modifications - substitute the thick forests with Manhattan skyscrapers, replace the sacred guru-shishya parampara with a ruthless mistress-slave relationship and most importantly, instead of mastery over the scriptures, there is the learning that eating Tomato soup sprinkled with fattening cheddar cheese is a sure fire way of becoming an outcaste.

The basic plot revolves around the hell endured by the Andrea Sachs - a bright twenty-three year old English graduate – when she joins as an assistant to Miranda Priestly, the editor of Runway magazine and an overbearing, unbelievably insensitive bitch whose Hitler-like authoritativeness is cloaked under the demeanour of the Queen mother. Miranda lives in her own world of fancy Paris parties and fancier clothes, with a coterie of nannies, maids, cooks and assistants to indulge all her quirky needs.  

Andrea, a small town girl who wouldn’t know a Jimmy Choo if it sneezed on her, takes up the offer as it would be a good platform to write for the New Yorker, her dream job. (or as they used to say in my B-school, because it’s a “good CV point”).This is where the fun begins. For starters, Andrea does no writing at all, if you discount making a note of all the calls that come for Miranda. She is then treated as a personal slave, nay a family slave, on call twenty-four hours everyday, including weekends for utterly whimsical reasons. Plus, she feels alienated from her Donna Karan obsessed colleagues who look at her like she’s last year’s fall line. Would she turn into a Dior Diva herself, or would she survive this haute couture cauldron and patch up strained relationships with her loved ones - her best friend Lily, her do-gooder boyfriend Alex and her family – forms the rest of the book.   

Weisberger’s nuanced usage of the right degree of exaggeration needs to be highlighted. Usually, too much of it is distracting and too little of it results in the point not getting across. Miranda’s whimsical requests and Andrea’s intended responses to them (indicated in italics), as opposed to the acquiescing actual responses, are so gutsplittingly hilarious that wouldn’t be out of place in MAD magazine, or even The Onion. Sadly, the same can’t be said about the plot which sags towards the end, almost resembling something out of a Bollywood movie. The introduction of Christian - a well-groomed and charming littérateur – as a possible love interest seemed as out of place as a pair of used Levi’s jeans in a closet full of Gucci’s finest legwear. The ending, which shies away from taking a definite stand on personal vs. professional priorities, is a nauseatingly contrived forceful attempt at tying up loose ends.

The story, however, forces oneself to examine the increasing glitziness all around us. Despite the ecosystem being confined to the rarified airs exclusive to the crème-de-le-crème, it is still a representative microcosm of contemporary urban society, which has similar levels of aspiration but unfortunately doesn’t have the finances to entertain all its consumerist fantasies. It is a portent indicator of how image conscious our world has become, about how our sense of self-worth has come to be defined by an inclination to buy overpriced garments bearing Italian surnames. This insecurity-induced need to fit in, fuelled by the continuous ingestion of well packaged “bling” thrown by the media is the engine on which this illusory concept of a false sense of identity thrives.

The biggest challenge in making this into a movie would be in conveying Andrea’s thoughts - which make the book the delightful read it is - to the viewer. As this article says, in the movie, the narration is by a silent third person observer, which, while giving the benefit of a wider perspective, could cause the tale to become more impersonal. And given the fact that it is a movie about the fashion world featuring the graceful Meryl Streep and the uber-cute Anne Hathaway, it should be a visual treat!

Tired of warming the benches in an IT company, Ravi went to B-school, where he invested time in productive pursuits like watching Scrubs and midnight snacking. Two years later, he walked out with some understanding of business - which didn’t stick for long - and an unflattering nickname - which has stuck to him like a leech. He currently works for an eCommerce firm in Mumbai. He hopes to one day eat the perfect dosa and make enough money to rent an apartment bigger than a refrigerator. His favourite pastimes are quizzing, bubble-wrap bursting and shamelessly plugging his blog – Write of Passage 

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