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Tag: comedy

Fans Are Freaking Out Over Novoneel Chakraborty’s New Rom-Com!

Posted on by prathod

Novoneel Chakraborty, known for his nail-biting thrillers with intricate twists, dark plots, and strong female protagonists, has often been dubbed the Sidney Sheldon of India. In an unexpected yet delightful shift, he surprises his fans by venturing into a romantic comedy with Remember Me As Yours. Combining the suspenseful mastery of Sheldon with the romantic flair of Jane Austen, this new book offers a unique blend of love and excitement.

 

Read this exclusive excerpt to experience Chakraborty like never before as he brings laughter and love to his storytelling.

 

Remember Me As Yours
Remember Me As Yours || Novoneel Chakraborty

***

‘Let’s meet at an OYO room,’ he had said over the phone. Nityami swallowed a lump in her throat. She knew what the connotation of an OYO room was. Though she was actually a virgin, she had told Raghav a lie that she had a boyfriend with whom she had been intimate. Nityami realized by now that it was all right to tell a guy about one boyfriend, or else she would run the risk of being interpreted as boring. More than one, and the boy would run the risk of feeling threatened
and also judge her character. Thus, she had told Raghav only about one imaginary boyfriend. The truth was, she never had a boyfriend. From the time she felt her hormones handholding her into puberty, she had a crush on one boy in school. The crush eventually turned into such an intense fixation that Nityami thought she would just remain in love with him, and he would never know it. The power of unreciprocated love. It can numb the sensible part of your brain for quite some time. For Nityami, it remained so until she turned twenty-three.

 

Looking around, she realized she too deserved a boyfriend. She knew someone must have been made for her; it was just that she didn’t think seeking him out would be such heartachingly hard work that even by twenty-seven, she wouldn’t be successful in finding THE man for her. There were plenty of options for the trending NATO (NotAttached-To-Outcome) dating amongst youngsters, but Nityami wasn’t exactly looking for that. That was till she met Raghav via Bumble a month ago. Their connection seemed to run at top gear. They met, they conversed, they liked each other; he told his parents first, then she told her parents and now, a month after their first date at a café, the families had locked a date for the engagement in the coming week and the wedding seven months later. It all happened so fast that Nityami didn’t know how to react. Perhaps that’s how life operates, she told herself. A long dry spell and then so much rain that you didn’t know whether to enjoy it or run for cover.

 

Standing in front of her bedroom mirror, Nityami knew she didn’t want to screw this up. If Raghav had called her to an OYO room, she knew he probably wanted to check their sexual compatibility. And rightly so. Though she wasn’t experienced enough to even understand what sexual compatibility was, going by what she heard from her experienced friends, all she knew was if the guy could go for more than half an hour, then it was a green light. One final look at her eyebrows and she convinced herself that nothing could be done now. Instead of him discovering it, Nityami thought, she would point out the faux pas herself when she met him in an hour. He probably wouldn’t mind it so much then.

 

Nityami was dressed casually but that was going to change. She always used to dress casually to go out of her house because she didn’t want her parents to know she was going out on a date. On date-days, she used to reach a nearby mall well before time, change, put on some make-up and then visit the café or restaurant to meet her date. And before coming back home, she would pretend in front of the guy that she was waiting for her Uber. When he left, she would invariably go back to the mall, change and finally head home. It would spare her all the unnecessary questions her parents would have asked otherwise. Even though they were involved in Raghav’s case, she still couldn’t tell her parents she was going to an OYO room with him. Nityami left the house saying she was going to meet a college friend.

 

That too triggered a set of questions from her mother:

Which college friend?

What is she doing now?

Is she married?

Kids?

How is her marriage going?

Is she settled here or abroad?

 

Nityami knew if the answers were negative, her mother would still be filled with a weird positivity. She would be convinced that her daughter wasn’t the only one suffering in the world. This time, before her mother could even ask who the friend was, Nityami left, saying her Uber had arrived.

 

During her Uber auto ride from the mall to the OYO hotel, Nityami suddenly started feeling nervous. She had never been naked in front of a man. And she didn’t have the perfect figure. She was slightly plump but thankfully, she had a good basal metabolic rate (BMR) so the fat was well distributed. She could feel gooseflesh thinking about what would happen in the room from the time she would enter it. Until that time, she had found Raghav very comfortable to be around. He never asked any awkward questions like the other guys she’d dated, nor did he have a condescending sense of humour where he belittled her and her attempts to be a working professional. Raghav didn’t have any problem with her working after marriage. Thinking about Raghav, she started fantasizing about what they would do. Would they simply begin smooching, strip each other and talk only after they were done? Like she had seen in so many Hollywood
films? Or would they converse a little, have some food and drink . . . Nityami remembered she had lied to him that she had never drunk alcohol. She did drink socially but the pressure of a ‘correct’ girl was something she started feeling when she entered the dating scene with marriage in mind. Casual dating didn’t have those pressures, but the guys who were in the dating scene for marriage wanted a ‘correct’ girl. And a correct girl meant she shouldn’t have any bad habits. Bad habits as defined by men, of course.

 

Nityami reached the OYO hotel.
‘Are you inside?’ she WhatsApped him on entering the lobby. Raghav was supposed to message her after he reached. He hadn’t.

 

‘Yes,’ the response came. It was a three-star hotel. Nothing fancy. Nityami walked up to the reception, gave them her Aadhaar card, which they photocopied and gave the original back to her. Nityami looked around for the elevator. She took it and stepped out on to the first floor. Next, she looked for room number 106. As she stood in front of the door, she took a deep breath. Something unprecedented would have happened by the time she came out of the room.

 

***

Want to know what happens next?

Get your copy of Remember Me As Yours by Novoneel Chakraborty on Amazon or wherever books are sold.

Roommate from Hell? Get Ready to LOL with this ‘Funny Story’

Posted on by prathod

Step right into the hilariously messy world of Funny Story by Emily Henry, where love lives next door to awkwardness. Imagine this: Daphne’s ex-fiancé is now dating her childhood friend, Petra. And guess who’s her new roommate? Yep, it’s Petra’s ex, Miles.

 

Read this exclusive excerpt to experience the comedy and chaos firsthand.

 

Funny Story
Funny Story || Emily Henry

***

Everyone around Peter Collins and Petra Comer knew their history: How they’d met in third grade when forced into alphabetical seating, bonding over a shared love of Pokémon. How, soon after, their mothers became friends while chaperoning an aquarium field trip, with their fathers to follow suit.

 

For the last quarter of a century, the Collinses and the Comers vacationed together. They celebrated birthdays, ate Christmas brunches, decorated their homes with handmade picture frames from which Peter’s and Petra’s faces beamed out beneath some iteration of the phrase BEST FRIENDS FOREVER.

 

This, Peter told me, made him and the most gorgeous woman I’d ever met more like cousins than friends.

 

As a librarian, I really should’ve taken a moment to think about Mansfield Park or Wuthering Heights, all those love stories and twisted Gothics wherein two protagonists, raised side by side, reach adulthood and proclaim their undying love for each other.

 

But I didn’t.

 

So now here I am, sitting in a tiny apartment, scrolling through Petra’s public social media, seeing every detail of her new courtship with my ex‑fiancé.

 

From the next room, Jamie O’Neal’s rendition of “All By Myself” plays loudly enough to make the coffee table shiver. My next‑door neighbor, Mr. Dorner, pounds on the wall.

 

I barely hear it, because I’ve just reached a picture of Peter and Petra, sandwiched between both sets of their parents, on the shore of Lake Michigan, six abnormally attractive people smiling abnormally white smiles over the caption, The best things in life are worth waiting for.

 

As if on cue, the music ratchets up.

 

I slam my computer shut and peel myself off the sofa. This apartment was built pre–global warming, when Northern Michiganders had no need for air‑conditioning, but it’s only May first and already the apartment turns into a brick oven around midday.

 

I cross to the bedroom hallway and knock on Miles’s door. He doesn’t hear me over Jamie. I escalate to pounding.

 

The music stops.

 

Footsteps shuffle closer. The door swings open, and a weed fog wafts out.

 

My roommate’s dark brown eyes are ringed in pink, and he’s in nothing but a pair of boxers and a funky knitted afghan wrapped around his shoulders like a very sad cape. Considering the overall climate of our hotbox apartment, I can only assume this is for modesty’s sake. Seems like overkill for a man who, just last night, forgot I lived with him long enough to take a whole‑ass shower with the door wide open.

 

His chocolate‑brown hair sticks up in every direction. His matching beard is pure chaos. He clears his throat. “What’s up.”

 

“Everything okay?” I ask, because while I’m used to a disheveled Miles, I’m less used to hearing him blast the saddest song in the world.

 

“Yep,” he says. “All good.”

 

“Could you turn the music down,” I say.

 

“I’m not listening to music,” he says, dead serious.

 

“Well, you paused it,” I say, in case he really is simply too high to remember more than three seconds back. “But it’s really loud.”

 

He scratches one eyebrow with the back of his knuckle, frowning. “I’m watching a movie,” he says. “But I can turn it down. Sorry.”

 

Without even meaning to, I’m peering over his shoulder to get a better look.

 

His TV, though, is what catches my eye. Onscreen is the image of a thirty‑year‑old Renée Zellweger, sporting red pajamas and belting a song into a rolled‑up magazine.

 

“Oh my god, Miles,” I say.

 

“What!” he cries, a little defensive.

 

“You’re watching Bridget Jones’s Diary?”

 

“It’s a good movie,” he says.

 

“It’s a great movie,” I say, “but this scene is, like, one minute long.”

 

He sniffs. “So?”

 

“So why has it been playing for at least”—I check my phone— “the last eight minutes?”

 

His dark brows knit together. “Did you need something, Daphne?”

 

“Could you just turn it down?” I say. “All the plates are rattling in the cabinets and Mr. Dorner’s trying to bust down the living room wall.”

 

Another sniff. “You want to watch?” he offers.

 

In there?

 

Too big of a tetanus risk. An ungenerous thought, sure, but I have recently tapped out my supply of generosity. That’s what happens when your life partner leaves you for the nicest, sunniest, prettiest woman in the state of Michigan.

 

“I’m good,” I tell Miles.

 

We both just stand there. This is as much as we ever interact. I’m about to break the record. My throat tickles. My eyes burn. I add, “And could you please not smoke inside?”

 

I would’ve asked sooner, except that, technically, the apartment is his. He did me a huge favor letting me move in.

 

Then again, it’s not like he had many options. His girlfriend had just moved out.

 

Into my apartment.

 

With my fiancé.

 

***

Get your copy of Funny Story by Emily Henry wherever books are sold.

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