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The Bad Boy's Guide To The Good Indian Girl
In this funny, wicked, touching, irreverent, poignant collection of stories, Annie Zaidi and Smriti Ravindra lift the veil (or sari pallu) on the lives and loves of girls who have been born or raised in the subcontinent. The niceties have to be observed, but the urge to subvert is often overwhelming. As they shimmy down drainpipes at midnight, or steal covert glances at the boys across the street, the real life incidents from which these stories are drawn will ring a bell with any woman who has negotiated the minefield of family love and romantic longing and desire that lies between childhood and womanhood. This is the Good Indian Girl as she has never been seen before fiesty, imaginative, a little crazy, smart, vulnerable. Prepare to be surprised.
- GenresFictionShort Stories
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
6 people are currently reading
154 people want to read
About the author
Annie Zaidi
24 books349 followersAnnie Zaidi writes poetry, essays, fiction, and scripts for the stage and the screen.
She is the author of The Comeback (2025), City of Incident: A novel in twelve parts (2021), and Prelude to a Riot, which won the Tata prize for fiction (2020). She is a recipient of the Nine Dots prize (2019) for Bread, Cement, Cactus: A memoir of belonging and dislocation.
Her other books include Bantering with Bandits and Other True Tales (collection of essays, short-listed for the Crossword Book Award (non- fiction) in 2010, Gulab (novella), Love Stories # 1 to 14 (short stories), and The Good Indian Girl (co-authored with Smriti Ravindra), and Crush (poetry).
She is also the editor of 'Unbound: 2,000 Years of Indian women's Writing' and of 'Equal Halves'.
Her work has appeared in various anthologies, including Mumbai Noir; Women Changing India; India Shining, India Changing, and in literary journals like the Griffith Review, The Massachusetts Review, Big Bridge, Out of Print, and The Aleph Review.
Her work as a playwright has been performed and read in several cities. She received The Hindu Playwright Award (2018) for Untitled 1. Her radio script ‘Jam’ was named regional (South Asia) winner for the BBC’s International Playwriting Competition (2011).
She has also written and directed several short films and the documentary film, In her words: The journey of Indian women.
She is the author of The Comeback (2025), City of Incident: A novel in twelve parts (2021), and Prelude to a Riot, which won the Tata prize for fiction (2020). She is a recipient of the Nine Dots prize (2019) for Bread, Cement, Cactus: A memoir of belonging and dislocation.
Her other books include Bantering with Bandits and Other True Tales (collection of essays, short-listed for the Crossword Book Award (non- fiction) in 2010, Gulab (novella), Love Stories # 1 to 14 (short stories), and The Good Indian Girl (co-authored with Smriti Ravindra), and Crush (poetry).
She is also the editor of 'Unbound: 2,000 Years of Indian women's Writing' and of 'Equal Halves'.
Her work has appeared in various anthologies, including Mumbai Noir; Women Changing India; India Shining, India Changing, and in literary journals like the Griffith Review, The Massachusetts Review, Big Bridge, Out of Print, and The Aleph Review.
Her work as a playwright has been performed and read in several cities. She received The Hindu Playwright Award (2018) for Untitled 1. Her radio script ‘Jam’ was named regional (South Asia) winner for the BBC’s International Playwriting Competition (2011).
She has also written and directed several short films and the documentary film, In her words: The journey of Indian women.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 4, 2019
Good girls are easy to spot. They are usually lost in books, avert their eyes from strange men, sit ten feet away from known ones, whip up a multi-course dinner in minutes, are obedient and soft-spoken. They do not have a boyfriend, they do not sleep around. Yes, indeed. The good ones can be picked out from a mile away. Or can they really? And anyway, what makes a good girl? How is the goodness defined and measured? Is it true that good girls never have any fun? What actually goes on in the minds and lives of good girls?
Zaidi and Ravindra try their best to answer, or at least discuss, these questions on the goodness and badness of girls in this slim volume. The prospect is terribly exciting. The authors have chosen to talk to real girls, and craft meandering stories out of their experiences. So there are tales of girls exchanging their demure salwars for figure hugging dresses, of girls agreeing to clandestine meetings and getting disappointed, girls who run away with undesirable boys and are brought back, and girls who trick their way into a marriage they want, while crawling out of an arranged marriage with equal ease. There are girls so desperate to be good they will shun all ideas of having a good time, and then there are girls obsessed with the idea of getting out of the ‘good’ rut. There are also boys confiding in us about their encounters with good girls and bad, those who dazzled them and those who left them dazed.
The stories touch upon many, many themes that are so close to the hearts of a lot of the readers – body image and marriage problems, love triangles and quadrangles, meeting with old sweethearts and fulfilling long-nurtured dreams. The ideas are refreshingly presented, through the lens of everyday life, through the actions of people going about in their mundane chores. The tone is non-judgmental, and good girls are heartily lauded and gently derided but never made to feel any the less for being themselves. The simple, colloquial language; the references to the modern day world; the sudden detour to discuss an everyday phenomenon – all of these really fuel readers’ expectations, making them feel as if there is so much more in store left to explore. Readers cannot be blamed if they feel that the book promises to come up with an extraordinary take on the lives of good (and bad and grey) girls. The only glitch here being that the promise eventually fizzles out.
What begins as a delightful peek into the world of the Good Indian Girl (GIG) gradually turns a tad too repetitive and at times, outlandish. The stories seek some sort of camaraderie in each other, a lot of them building up on the characters and scenes from the previous ones. This is definitely not a bad style, and would have worked if there were multiple facets to a personality, but unfortunately by the second or third story based on the character, there is nothing left to reveal. All readers are left with is a semi-boring exploration of an interesting-turned-dull character. A couple of the stories do not even justify the title, they are just there as an appendage, and could be inserted into any other book and not necessarily one on GIGs. Another irksome factor about the stories is that some of them are too juvenile. They are true, no doubt. There are plenty of girls who are branded for talking to boys, a lot of girls hitching rides from strange men, and god knows how many teenaged girls arguing on whether or not to splurge on a bra. But these are just one facet among many, and an obsession with these minor issues takes away from the bigger picture that the writers set out to paint.
The random italicized texts between the stories are often much more interesting and relatable than the stories themselves. These really depict the idea behind the book. The idea of laying bare the foundations of a good girl, delving into the mechanisms that go into forming it, sustaining it, keeping it alive and throbbing, or else relegating the ‘good’ image to the dustbin. One time, a good girl is thus defined: ‘A good girl, in short, must not only be restrained but must also look as if she has no need for restraint, as if she doesn’t even know what she is supposed to restrain and why’ (63). Elsewhere, in a few lines, the authors have revealed a common characteristic of a good girl that will really reach out to its female readers: ‘In most parts of the subcontinent, women – young girls particularly – will not refer to their underwear. They often have cute nicknames for the garment. In school and college we heard variations such as: the B and the P; U-Gs; inners; ‘body’ (perhaps a corruption of ‘bodice’); slip; and ‘uppers and lowers’, which sounds like a reference to genres of narcotics.’ (47)
Apart from a handful of really effective stories, it is for snippets like this that the book is really worth going through. For ideas and habits and ways of living that might seem strange to others, but is a part of the life that the good (Indian, but not necessarily limited to one) girl has imbibed as her own. The book is also to be read for making an honest attempt to decipher the good girl, often in intimate, warm, identifiable terms. The language is polished, the tone is unapologetic, and the sections are titled quite appealingly – starting from ‘Finger Play’, traversing through ‘Panty Lines’, ‘Boobs’ and ‘Virgins’ to ‘Men’ and what not, and ending in ‘Stains’. The duo deserve all kinds of praise for their attempt, for introducing readers to a stimulating concept, for helping girls and boys identify and explore themselves. This is the kind of book that needs to be published in series with ideas from a whole lot of people, its theme is so vast and charming and engrossing that it simply cannot be contained in a single volume.
Zaidi and Ravindra try their best to answer, or at least discuss, these questions on the goodness and badness of girls in this slim volume. The prospect is terribly exciting. The authors have chosen to talk to real girls, and craft meandering stories out of their experiences. So there are tales of girls exchanging their demure salwars for figure hugging dresses, of girls agreeing to clandestine meetings and getting disappointed, girls who run away with undesirable boys and are brought back, and girls who trick their way into a marriage they want, while crawling out of an arranged marriage with equal ease. There are girls so desperate to be good they will shun all ideas of having a good time, and then there are girls obsessed with the idea of getting out of the ‘good’ rut. There are also boys confiding in us about their encounters with good girls and bad, those who dazzled them and those who left them dazed.
The stories touch upon many, many themes that are so close to the hearts of a lot of the readers – body image and marriage problems, love triangles and quadrangles, meeting with old sweethearts and fulfilling long-nurtured dreams. The ideas are refreshingly presented, through the lens of everyday life, through the actions of people going about in their mundane chores. The tone is non-judgmental, and good girls are heartily lauded and gently derided but never made to feel any the less for being themselves. The simple, colloquial language; the references to the modern day world; the sudden detour to discuss an everyday phenomenon – all of these really fuel readers’ expectations, making them feel as if there is so much more in store left to explore. Readers cannot be blamed if they feel that the book promises to come up with an extraordinary take on the lives of good (and bad and grey) girls. The only glitch here being that the promise eventually fizzles out.
What begins as a delightful peek into the world of the Good Indian Girl (GIG) gradually turns a tad too repetitive and at times, outlandish. The stories seek some sort of camaraderie in each other, a lot of them building up on the characters and scenes from the previous ones. This is definitely not a bad style, and would have worked if there were multiple facets to a personality, but unfortunately by the second or third story based on the character, there is nothing left to reveal. All readers are left with is a semi-boring exploration of an interesting-turned-dull character. A couple of the stories do not even justify the title, they are just there as an appendage, and could be inserted into any other book and not necessarily one on GIGs. Another irksome factor about the stories is that some of them are too juvenile. They are true, no doubt. There are plenty of girls who are branded for talking to boys, a lot of girls hitching rides from strange men, and god knows how many teenaged girls arguing on whether or not to splurge on a bra. But these are just one facet among many, and an obsession with these minor issues takes away from the bigger picture that the writers set out to paint.
The random italicized texts between the stories are often much more interesting and relatable than the stories themselves. These really depict the idea behind the book. The idea of laying bare the foundations of a good girl, delving into the mechanisms that go into forming it, sustaining it, keeping it alive and throbbing, or else relegating the ‘good’ image to the dustbin. One time, a good girl is thus defined: ‘A good girl, in short, must not only be restrained but must also look as if she has no need for restraint, as if she doesn’t even know what she is supposed to restrain and why’ (63). Elsewhere, in a few lines, the authors have revealed a common characteristic of a good girl that will really reach out to its female readers: ‘In most parts of the subcontinent, women – young girls particularly – will not refer to their underwear. They often have cute nicknames for the garment. In school and college we heard variations such as: the B and the P; U-Gs; inners; ‘body’ (perhaps a corruption of ‘bodice’); slip; and ‘uppers and lowers’, which sounds like a reference to genres of narcotics.’ (47)
Apart from a handful of really effective stories, it is for snippets like this that the book is really worth going through. For ideas and habits and ways of living that might seem strange to others, but is a part of the life that the good (Indian, but not necessarily limited to one) girl has imbibed as her own. The book is also to be read for making an honest attempt to decipher the good girl, often in intimate, warm, identifiable terms. The language is polished, the tone is unapologetic, and the sections are titled quite appealingly – starting from ‘Finger Play’, traversing through ‘Panty Lines’, ‘Boobs’ and ‘Virgins’ to ‘Men’ and what not, and ending in ‘Stains’. The duo deserve all kinds of praise for their attempt, for introducing readers to a stimulating concept, for helping girls and boys identify and explore themselves. This is the kind of book that needs to be published in series with ideas from a whole lot of people, its theme is so vast and charming and engrossing that it simply cannot be contained in a single volume.
April 18, 2025
In the Indian context, this is a series of real life stories of GIG (Good Indian Girl). From childhood to adulthood, highlights the societal expectations for being a girl. Relatable tales. Satirical. Poignant.
However I didn't like the overall execution. Much of the incidents, apparently true, felt fabricated. Maybe it was the contrasting Keegan effect!
Overall:
Much needed theme on the traditional patriarchal society norms. My expectations were higher.
However I didn't like the overall execution. Much of the incidents, apparently true, felt fabricated. Maybe it was the contrasting Keegan effect!
Overall:
Much needed theme on the traditional patriarchal society norms. My expectations were higher.
August 28, 2018
Some interesting stories. None particularly insightful, but did bring back many memories from school times. It seems silly now but the book made me remember how real it all was. And not everyone may have got out of it unscathed.
The few stories towards the end featuring Seema were specially evocative ending the book on a strong note.
The few stories towards the end featuring Seema were specially evocative ending the book on a strong note.
Read
September 22, 2012Met the author so I'm biased :) It is a quirky insight into the tightrope we girls walk in our daily lives!
May 31, 2015
Must read for all bachelors.
June 18, 2014
It’s been a long that I have posted any book review. So Mrs. Blend shared a brilliantly written book called The Bad Boys Guide To The Good Indian Girl written by Annie Zaidi and Smriti Ravindra . I really thought of sparing bit of time and contributing for this book.
The Bad Boys Guide To The Good Indian Girl Author: Smriti Ravindra, Annie Zaidi
Started reading with lots of assumptions considering the subject of the book but I was proved wrong. Overall I was zapped by this wonderfully written series of short stories.
How this will help INDIAN men to understand INDIAN women better:
There are times where there’s absolutely no reason to worry, you have to let woman be themselves and wait until she tells. If it takes longer, ask. Do not jump into guns. Just like I did before reading this book, I made classic mistake, judged it before reading it. Asking solves many unwanted issues. Makes communication easier.
Just like men, women too have desires and it needs to be accepted without labeling them. Please refrain. We all lust about opposite sex and some, even about same sex.
Definition of fun is pretty much the same for men and women but it’s the way how men and women approach varies.
Book talks about how school girl tackles issues from her childhood days and carries on those views as she grows until something really serious or life changing incident shakes a woman’s mind.
Typically book has more to give than its in your face title. I really recommend this book to all men. My humble request to all men and women to gift this book to others to maintain better harmony in women’s and of course men’s life.
peculiarblend
The Bad Boys Guide To The Good Indian Girl Author: Smriti Ravindra, Annie Zaidi
Started reading with lots of assumptions considering the subject of the book but I was proved wrong. Overall I was zapped by this wonderfully written series of short stories.
How this will help INDIAN men to understand INDIAN women better:
There are times where there’s absolutely no reason to worry, you have to let woman be themselves and wait until she tells. If it takes longer, ask. Do not jump into guns. Just like I did before reading this book, I made classic mistake, judged it before reading it. Asking solves many unwanted issues. Makes communication easier.
Just like men, women too have desires and it needs to be accepted without labeling them. Please refrain. We all lust about opposite sex and some, even about same sex.
Definition of fun is pretty much the same for men and women but it’s the way how men and women approach varies.
Book talks about how school girl tackles issues from her childhood days and carries on those views as she grows until something really serious or life changing incident shakes a woman’s mind.
Typically book has more to give than its in your face title. I really recommend this book to all men. My humble request to all men and women to gift this book to others to maintain better harmony in women’s and of course men’s life.
peculiarblend
May 23, 2013
I actually wanted to leave it midway but I'm glad I didn't. I enjoyed the other half of the book. Maybe it was because of my expectations after reading love stories by Annie Zaidi. It actually made me think that how one defines a good Indian girl. I didn't get my answer in this book. Someone told me long time back that women who don't fear society are prostitutes. I so wanted to punch that guy but somehow controlled. I'm glad I talk less or avoid people now.
August 10, 2016
Everyone (30+), be it urban or rural India will find a connect with at least one story in the book, if not more. It relates the stories in a very lighthearted manner but there is nothing casual about the issues it cover. The only problem is that by the time I read through half the book, I felt that the stories got a little repititive. Worth a read.
Read
March 16, 2015nice.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews