The Other Man
Written by Farhad J. Dadyburjor
Narrated by Ariyan Kassam
3/5
()
About this audiobook
A heartwarming and transporting romantic comedy about finding happy ever after on your own terms.
Heir to his father’s Mumbai business empire, Ved Mehra has money, looks, and status. He is also living as a closeted gay man. Thirty-eight, lonely, still reeling from a breakup, and under pressure from his exasperated mother, Ved agrees to an arranged marriage. He regrettably now faces a doomed future with the perfectly lovely Disha Kapoor.
Then Ved’s world is turned upside down when he meets Carlos Silva, an American on a business trip in India.
As preparations for his wedding get into full swing, Ved finds himself drawn into a relationship he could never have imagined—and ready to take a bold step. Ved is ready to embrace who he is and declare his true feelings regardless of family expectations and staunch traditions. But with his engagement party just days away, and with so much at risk, Ved will have to fight for what he wants—if it’s not too late to get it.
Farhad J. Dadyburjor
Farhad J. Dadyburjor has been an entertainment and lifestyle journalist for over twenty years. Born and based in Mumbai, India, he has held several senior editorial positions, including at DNA newspaper, as launch editor at the international men’s magazine FHM, and currently at The Leela Magazine. He has also written for numerous publications and has a blog of his own. His debut novel, How I Got Lucky, was a satire on India’s celebrity culture that was hailed as “racy, sexy, and riotous” by Vogue India.
Related to The Other Man
Related audiobooks
This Way Out Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Grooms Wore White Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gay Best Friend Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5New Adult Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Something Fabulous Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Problem With Perfect Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How Not To Ask A Boy to Prom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Never Been Kissed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Book Boyfriend Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Life Revamp Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When London Snow Falls Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Unexpected Kind of Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Waiting for the Flood Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Glitterland Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Love, Hate & Clickbait Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hate Project Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5If I See You Again Tomorrow Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Our Favorite Songs: A Moonlighters Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Out of Character Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blind Dates Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leave Myself Behind Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPeaches & Honey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You & I, Rewritten: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Memoriam Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Reality of Us Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Family Life For You
Leave the World Behind: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Last Thing He Told Me: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reminders of Him: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Winter Garden Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Five Years: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Then She Was Gone: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The People We Keep Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Covenant of Water Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5My Sister's Keeper: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Night Road Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Regretting You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nothing to See Here Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Maybe in Another Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5After I Do: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Half Moon: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bird Box: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Racing in the Rain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Idea of You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don't Let Her Stay Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Forever, Interrupted: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Where the Forest Meets the Stars Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Humans: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Joy Luck Club Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Commonwealth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Collected Regrets of Clover: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nineteen Minutes: A novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mask of Sanity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Other Man
23 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Real Rating: 4.25* of five, rounded down because I feel charitable despite getting NINE W-BOMBS splattered on my hems like chamberpots tossed out a medieval windowFINALIST FOR THE 34th LAMMY AWARD—BEST GAY ROMANCE! Winners announced 11 June 2022.The Publisher Says: A heartwarming and transporting romantic comedy about finding happy ever after on your own terms.Heir to his father’s Mumbai business empire, Ved Mehra has money, looks, and status. He is also living as a closeted gay man. Thirty-eight, lonely, still reeling from a breakup, and under pressure from his exasperated mother, Ved agrees to an arranged marriage. He regrettably now faces a doomed future with the perfectly lovely Disha Kapoor.Then Ved’s world is turned upside down when he meets Carlos Silva, an American on a business trip in India.As preparations for his wedding get into full swing, Ved finds himself drawn into a relationship he could never have imagined―and ready to take a bold step. Ved is ready to embrace who he is and declare his true feelings regardless of family expectations and staunch traditions. But with his engagement party just days away, and with so much at risk, Ved will have to fight for what he wants―if it’s not too late to get it.I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.My Review: There is nothing quite so satisfying to me as to read something where, since the conventions of the genre are well-established and I'm deeply familiar with them, the Rules get a good, solid workout. It really looked like something was just going to happen in the established and expected (in the book's world) way, and I'd've been reading a different book than the one I thought I was getting.This did not occur. That is a Good Thing.There's always a HEA (Happily Ever After) in a romance novel, or in a rom-com. They aren't always clearly signaled from the beginning. Usually, after a long time reading them, one gets a feeling for what's coming up. The thing that makes this a better version of the genres (they're not identical, romances and rom-coms) is that I got the real and genuine interiority of the main man. He was well aware how people viewed homosexuality in this country—as if it were a disease that could be cured like any other. He would become the object of ridicule at work, and he could imagine all too easily the way Mum’s friends would sneer about his “abnormality” behind his back, offering their sympathies to Dolly while secretly relishing the downfall of the once-mighty Mehra name.–and–Carlos clearly believed Ved was different, but Ved wasn’t so sure. Ved had once been the one to smile at Akshay like that, with his whole face open, with such trust. Ved had done that from this very seat at this very table. Now, the roles were reversed. In this scenario, Ved was Akshay. And that terrified him.The point-of-view character is, in the best versions of the genres, developed beyond the absolute minimum. In Dadyburjor's book, the repeal of Section 377, a British Colonial law against consensual gay sex between men, provides the backdrop for the gradual awakening of the main man to his responsibilities as a societal actor. His long-brewing confrontation with himself, his internalized need to Please and to fit in, tracks with the Indian Supreme Court's decision to overturn this legacy of obtuse and cruel Britishness. This places the book's action as taking place around 6 September 2018, when the decision to strike down the law was formally issued.As framing devices for coming-out narratives go, it's awfully hard to beat that one! It isn't exactly harped on, American audiences without much interest in the fate of their fellow men in other countries aren't going to get smacked with it everywhere, but there is enough to make the turning points clear to someone who has paid attention.Ved, our main man, is really the opposite of a cinnamon roll...maybe a kale salad, like the one he eats *convulsive retch* during the dark, pre-coming-out days?...he not only deserves his suffering but is let off lightly by the author for his unconscionable acts of lying by omission and commission. He's eaten alive by self-loathing and guilt? Good! He merits these feelings! His actions towards both his gal-pal/fiancée and his belovè'd Carlos are reprehensible indeed. Yes yes yes he's trying to please everyone else and not being in the least bit honest in it. That's part of the character's journey...and part of the framing device's demands. The point of Ved coming out at all was to be, legally and finally, a gay man in a country that stopped making it possible for sleazy, evil people to victimize him. (Go watch the 1961 film Victim if you want to see what specifically could happen to a man like Ved without the repeal of Section 377. It is not all that pleasant, he said with his best clipped English tones.)But this is all in service of A Redemption. The redemption comes after the main man is out, after he takes his lumps and makes his obeisances to the ones his dishonesty hurt. It does indeed work, for this particular reader, as a romance novel for that reason. I wouldn't call it a rom-com, as I've seen others do. I don't find lying and hiding amusing anymore...once I might've, since I used to laugh my socks off at Absolutely Fabulous (am now unable to watch even a full episode).Ved makes as good as anyone can for the harm he's caused. That merits some sort of reward. But we don't see it...the engagement party that he's just caused to crash and burn was a few days, like two or three!, away when he said "NO" and we see NONE of the carnage? Why do I feel so cheated of some good, meaty melodrama? And Disha, the woman he was engaged to, wasn't any monadnock of probity, either, yet she gets nothing, absolutely nothing! of a reckoning for her lying? Hm. I get the constraints of romance-novel length but a balance could've been struck, couldn't it?So no, no fives from me. But I must say that I completely understand the inclusion of the book on the Lammy Awards list of bests of 2021. It deserves, in my never-remotely-humble opinion, the win. The originality of the framing device, its careful use so as not to be intrusive to audiences who *sigh* just don't care but still present enough to make the timeline clear, gets big kudos. The main man's journey from child-man to man is satisfyingly real. The ending is indeed happy, and that was exactly what the entire exercise promised. Promise: kept. Pleasure: had.