I have just read Five Point Someone…I cannot call it a GOOD book but it surely does well as a GOOD timepass! The story seems to be a saga of the underdogs, which is absolutely fine, actually great! Writing about people who generally go unnoticed or get noticed for all the wrong reasons in school or college, will always be game!
Ryan, Alok and Hari, the three bumchums at IIT, equally distant from each other in character, do the wrong things and more wrongs in order to get the things already done wrong, right! One after another, they land themselves in trouble, calling for more trouble in latter part of the course, to the extent that at one point, they rue about having done what they did. Well, you can’t blame them…they wanted to live a life they would love to…but they would not be given the choice to. Yet, loads of support from a young professor, some grit from themselves and a bagful of luck help the guys manage decent seats in the professional arena.
Guys (budding graduates), don’t just ever think that you can get away doing all this in IIT or for that matter, any decent college…it can, in fact, lead you to undesired and unsavory situations, dragging in legal and disciplinary hands to make things worse. And luck would surely be the last one to be by your side, let alone the one super-generous professor in college. You get into all this swamp; you know you have lost it. Coz these colleges are still miles away from implementing changes that you desire and long for…you have to slog it out, take that!
Now… for the book itself…Well, Chetan Bhagat seems to be a good light blog writer, (no offence please)! Once you are through the 27 chapters it feels more of a delicious tang for the teenager than that of an adult. I mean, it is difficult to imagine enjoying a ‘Munnabhai MBBS’ after a delightful watch of a Ray film, or relishing a mere nice blog after savoring Pamuk’s ‘My Name is Red’ (which I have been reading of late)… but, friends, trust me, it is true that it can work wonders! You don’t have to rack your brains, think deep or concentrate hard to suck in the juice.
A certain relief from the heavy reads we normally indulge in…a whiff of fresh air, you might say, allowing a break, temporary though, from deeper issues that otherwise fill our lives so much! Despite everything, once you are through, you know you have enjoyed a completely entertaining stretch of 24 hours (or two days for some, at the most to finish the book). Nice read!
