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Five Point SomeoneThere are many factors that made me connect with Chetan Bahag's "Five Point Someone..." - (a) I belonged to dumb Mechanical Engineering Department deprived of girls... (b) I am someone who always believe that there is a life beyond the academics (& now work) even if it costed me the percentages (now appraisals)... (c) Screwed up an year in sitting for improvement exams to get into an Engineering college, who degree I never used in my life till date... Welcome to the world behind the closed doors of the gates of IIT, where life is pretty dull and reticent besides being amidst of plush and posh campuses sprawling over in hundres of acres... This Chetan Bhagat's best seller (to be a major movie soon) is deeply engaging for anybody who had spent their colleges  IIT-ians or Non IIT-ians. Chetan's simple English and a free flowing narrative structure makes it a reader's delight.

 

Like any campus caper, "Five Point..." begins with the day the protagonists enter the college and ends with their graduation day. Our protagonists are Ryan - the spirited, care-a-damn attitude and adventurous, Alok - a whimper, typical middle class valued with conflicts between the responsibilities and enjoying, Hari - the neutral guy balancing between the extreme Ryan and Alok, all having the GPAs ranging between 5.01 - 5.88, that's why this title "five point someone". Their struggles to keep them afloat among the high GPAs despite loathing the IIT's system, pressures, workload, boring assignments find their way through out the book in a humorous manner. A friendship that blossoms between them since the day one blooms as a deep relationship in passage of time.

Chetan BhagatChetan, being himself an ex-IITian puts the IIT system under scanner with valid questions like "What had IITs done for Indian past 30 years than manufacturing techies and exporting them to US? Where is any new invention from the minds of creative Engineers?" Too much emphasis is given for grades and marks thus suppressing the creativity of the students. Incidents like Ryan coming up with own inventions like "self powering jack", "lubes for increasing the efficiency of engines" and not to forget "lipstick case" for Neha, but the very ideas and papers being crushed mercilessly by the professors. The final speech by the Prof. Cherian confessing that GPA's doesn't make a person good necessarily and acknowledging a life beyond the IITs is simply exhilirating.

{mosimage}This novel has its set of supporting characters like Prof. Veera, the messiah for our protagonists; Prof. Cherian the ultimate tough task master, Alok's paralysed father, a dramatic weeping mother and Ms. Neha Cherian who seeps in the novel with some freshness as a romantic angle for Hari. Infact the track between Neha and Hari is the only relief factor for this novel. The quite stretched chapter "My longest Day in life" is quite intresting, ladened with twists and turns whose repercussions form the vital part of the novel, is a 'complete packaged' chapter with episodes of thrill, romance and even sex in broad day light between Hari and Neha.

My most fave character is obviously Ryan - who is completely like me - believing in life other than grades, quite adventurous in that process and not believing the systems in place and at the same time who had suffered setbacks by non conforming to the same set of systems. There are many dialogues mouthed by Ryan which I had done in my real life and sometimes even the descriptions by Hari describing Ryan were very much similiar to me.

One weak point I can say is that the novel is completely humorous and witty that sometimes we are left confused whethere the protagonists are going in the right way or screwing up their career. This Chetan Bhagat's (undramatised) novel is a page turner and irresistable that I finished the book at one go...

{mosimage}This novel is a 'purfectttt' Bollywood material and no wonder it is being made as movie as '3 Idiots' by Vidhu Vinod Chopra directed by Rajkumar Hirani ('Munnabhai' series fame), starring Aamir Khan, Madhavan, Sharman Joshi, Kareena Kapoor and Boman Irani. I believe Rayan - Aamir Khan, Alok - Sharman Joshi, Hari - Madhavan, Prof. Cherian - Boman Irani and Neha - Kareena Kapoor is the cast for the film. Since I had read about the movie and star cast much before reading the novel, it helped me in visualising the characters with the above said actors, thus giving a Bollywood effect. Also I had seen the life in such campuses through my sister while she did a project in IISC, Bangalore, I had a fair idea about how the campuses would have been.

I would suggest that everyone should give this book a try. Priced at Rs. 95/-, it is cheaper than a evening snacks out. Now I am looking forward to read Chetan's other books.