Few from the present urban youth in India would have not heard of Hallyu or the Korean Wave—cultural imports from South Korea. It encompasses not just K-pop and K-Drama that have exploded, but also fashion, food, language, beauty and anything else that is culturally importable. The young fans want to look like, and imitate, their K-Pop and K-drama idols and artists. You Had Me at Annyeong! by Malini Banerjee is also an outcome of this.
It might be one of the first novels based on a Korean romance. The earlier books Hallyu Namaste: Korean Waves on the Indian shores or Korean Wave in India: Fandom, Cuisine and Consumption are more academic and analytical that study the impact of Korean culture. Malini Banerjee, however, is ‘a media professional turned singer-songwriter’, as the blurb introduces her. She admits to being smitten by the K-drama bug. That’s apparent both from the turn of phrases or expressions she uses.
You Had Me at Annyeong! (Annyeong means hello, bye and also peace, depending on its usage) reads like a novelized version of a Korean serial drama very much in the Mills & Boon style. The setting is Mumbai, Bali and Seoul. An Indian woman (Timara) in her mid-thirties and from a mixed background of a Bengali mother and an Assamese father, falls in love with a Korean man (Haneul). He is a few years younger than her. The way this happens is very much like in the formula format of Mills & Boon of yonder years. Timara has been jilted by her boyfriend (Rodrigues) in India and therefore resigns from her job as an executive in a PR firm and goes away to Indonesia to get over it. There she is spotted quite by chance by Haneul who is there for an advertisement shoot for his firm. Timara accidentally faints into his arms. He is totally smitten by her. But there matters end because Timara is clueless about this.
Haneul returns to Korea and advertises for a position in his advertising firm and tailors the requirement to suit Timara. She happens to spot the advertisement, applies for it and lands up with the job in Haneul’s firm. Though she does not recognize him, she is charmed by his looks and demeanour, while her ex-boyfriend Rodrigues tries to return to her life.
The rest is the serialized drama which is worth reading for its easy and interesting flow. The dialogue between the various characters and the sequence of events are all highly dramatized, humorous and very entertaining.
This book is for the K-drama afflicted youth familiar with Hindi and Korean. They are bound to love its filmy phrases, like ‘Hansome Haneul ki hansi mein main NOT phansi’ or ‘Koi Hero yahan, koi Zero vahan’. The chatty and funny dialogue is interspersed with a lot of Hindi, Korean and at places Bengali words and expressions, making it obvious that the writer is comfortable in all these languages, besides of course, English. It is good to take with you while travelling.
Given the K-drama craze in India, this could well become a pioneer of such fiction.