Yashodhara Lal has a special skill to induce laughter even from day-to-day mundane incidents and Sorting Out Sid is a book which is sure to make you smile . Meeting the protagonist Siddharth Agarwal  aka Sid is like meeting a guy-next-door. We are so acquainted with his idiosyncrasies , his unintentional  messing up of things …like ” So ! when is the baby due ? ” ..he blurts out as soon as he points a slightly bulging tummy ! Just think of the embarrassment of the lady who fails to shed that extra calorie !! But Sid is like that. A young man of thirty-six and almost at the zenith of his career with a company doing business with toilet cleaners . He is over-enthusiastic  about some of the things in his life and loves to say ” Fine ! FINE ” at anything and just for a variation he uses ” Good ! GOOD ” . But actually everything is not really good as his fifteen-year-old marriage is about to yield a divorce and his relationship with some friends gets tangled .

Like all of us , Sid has many a shade in his life … he is The Husband Sid, The Party Sid , The Uncle Sid , The Son Sid and of course The Work Sid . He tries his level best to play each role in an impeccable manner but evidently ends up in a conundrum. His aspiration for a six-feet stature makes him miserable in front of Krish’s six-three frame and he gets a complex in spite of his spiffy appearance. His relationship with Mandira is such that he feels ” replacing her Colgate Toothpaste tube with a tube of Odomos “. A small portion of Sid , actually , resides in everyone of us and that’s why we can relate with the character so easily. His dilemmas , his confusions, eccentricities, complexes as well as joy and happiness become ours unknowingly.

By the middle of the story Sid actually gets himself to the chair of his ex-boss Akash by becoming the youngest Vee-Pee in the company. He cherishes his promotion and tries to be a tad more confident in his actions and decisions. But sorting out things is not a child’s play and Sid , to his parents is still a child who are always there to protect him from every woe , even from his divorce. As happens in real life , things are harder than they appear and Sid continues his journey to figure them out, in a proper way and the readers take a stroll along with him .

Yashodhara really has a flare for writing a well-woven story. Her debut work Just Married Please Excuse is an ample proof to that and this one Sorting Out Sid , even is a better one. Crisp wit and delectable humour along with an occasional tinge of satire have done the job in a wonderful manner. But it would be wiser if we could dig deeper and  observe the incisive insight of the author . Her depiction of different situations and characters are believable most of the times and as the readers smile they also think of similar situations they have confronted with. Yashodhara Lal has successfully camouflaged the serious issues with smile. I absolutely enjoyed each and every bit of the book and would like to recommend it to everyone , either in need of sorting out life or not.

P.S. I really love the cover of the book !

From my side it’s 4/5

About The Author

Yashodhara Lal’s USP is in taking the ordinary and making it hilarious. She graduated from IIM-Bangalore in 2002 and has over 12 years of experience in the Marketing Domain across two large corporations in FMCG and media. She lives in Gurgaon with her husband Vijay, and the three small children they call Peanut, Pickle and Papad – all of whom never fail to provide her with material for her entertaining blog at http://www.yashodharalal.com.

This review is written for and shared with Indiblogger.

By ManiparnaSenguptaMajumder