FIVE POINT SOMEONE
MONDAY, JUNE 28, 2004
Five point someone
Been reading reviews about this book called fivepoint someone and have been wanting to read it. An impending overseas travel reminded me that I may have to temporarily severe my relationship with the platform guy.
Yesterday evening I walked into oxford book store and bought the book ... for just Rs.95-/. Chetan Bhagat the author of the book says.. this is to encourage more readers to the book . ( I wonder what the paperback edition will sell for ?.
Anyway this blog is about the book and not so much about the impending threat to the business model of second hand books that sell on roadsides.
I picked the book up at oxford and the computer receipt says it was 7.01 p.m .. took the bus to VT ... took a train ... i must have alighted at the right station .. for i had to take a break to walk up home ... had a quick dinner ... and i think it was around 1.45 am when i actually regained consciousness into the world outside.
" Un putdownable" is the right word .. (so what if indian express has used to word before ). I haven't exploded into bouts of uncontrollable laughter in the middle of the night in a long time now . For a while my parents sleeping the next room did come into check if i was OK ...
On the other hand it was moving ... reminds me of so many people i have known at campus, at work and some from school days. Especially the question paper leak incident reminds me of a similar one at my school when the hostel boys decided to get inot some nocturnal adventure . Unlike our characters in this book they actually succeeded in getting a copy of the QP .. but were caught much later because they were being too liberal in giving out the questions to the rest of us who were not quite a part of the adventure. The excellent results in Physics paper which beat the law of averages gave rose to the suspiscion and the Physics paper was scrapped . But the unofficial version went around that some self-righteous creep ( from the scholarly camp) went and whispered it into the principal's ears .
5.someone has shades of so many people we have all known in school / college and at work . The reality that we all have grappled with sooner or later , in being shown our place and made to understand our relative mediocrity in an maddeningly competitive world ...
The book is about three friends who join IIT - Ryan , Alok and Hari... whose below average GPA and their quest to do something to beat the system gets them into big time trouble ... just when you think they would sail through... there they go and get into deeper shit. You cannot but feel sorry for the guys ... but somehow i expected the story would have a happy ending . The ending was more realistic than anything else and that is the best part of the story.
Working for a sOftware company i know what kind of nerds we get to interview when going to campus . Reminds me of the campus recruitment days in IIT powai. Considering that we were'nt exactly great paymasters we knew the most exciting guys never quite came to us... but there was this guy...who when asked why he wanted to join TCS ... said that with his GPA .. he could not have gotten anywhere else... could that have been one of the living avatars of RYAN ...?
I am uncomfortable with all those reviews comapirng Dil chahta hai with 5.someone...
While Dil chahta hai was a breezy romance which deals with the lives of three rich urbane guys... 5.someone is more of something that anyone who's been through anykind of campus life could relate to.
It is more than just about campus life . It takes a peek into the reality of the ... the crushing familiy responsbilities and the meek submission to dowry demands of middle class india ...over dependence on the male heir to bail out the family from its financial crisis ...
It is also about the glaring absence of a healthy mix of female population in institutes of higher education ( i plan to dedicate another blog on this topic) ... the mixed feelings of sexually confused youth ... the mindless chase to achieve academic excellence ...
The potrayal is utterly realistic yet light hearted and the language especially the oneliners are witty and the book at a cool "bata" like price at 95/- is worth the buy ...
To all those whose sense of self-worth has been badly bruised by the bell curve that categorises you into a 1,2,3and 4 and not a 5 ... here is a good read...
It provides you no spiritual insights ... but guarantees some good fun and the comfort that there are characters ( albeit fictional ) who have sailed through worse .
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