'Five Point Someone' - A Book Review

IIT or IIM no big deal. Everywhere students are students and the pranks they do are universal. And most importantly there are STUDENTS like US.

It was only two days ago read I read the book (in four hours flat actually) 'Five Point Someone' By Chetan Bhagat. The only reason why I took up the book is because so many people said it's similar to the movie 'Dil Chahta Hai' which is my favorite.

It's exactly that. You have three guys Ryan, Hari and Alok (Akash, Sameer, Sid....) who get ino the prestigious institution in India , IIT -Delhi. Ryan is very creative, highly intelligent and with that naturally comes arrogant attitude. Hari is the one who narrates the entire history of them. He is fickle minded. It takes no more than some juicy talk to influence him. And the most important of all the characters whom you might have seen from your intermediate to this year- Alok. He is very studious, poor, and fat. He loves food. The story starts with how these three guys get to know each other through one of the most dreaded things in the first year's life, you guessed it, ragging. From then on you will get to know each character in depth with absolutely superb narrative. Ryan keeps bickering about the IIT system and there are quite a few instances where you would ask yourself “What is the big deal about IIT then? ". While Alok being highly sensitive, poor with no friends dislikes him somewhat but all the same follows him. Hari, though throughout the book says he is unbiased, always flows with Ryan. It boils down finally to a stage which they never could have imagined.

Well, if it were to be only this then man I wouldn't have touched the book with a pole long stick, there is this small story interwoven with the small plot, between Neha and Hari which gives the afterlife to the book. The interesting part about this book is at no point of time you feel bored or hackneyed or dragging. Everything goes with a breakneck speed especially ' The longest day of my life' (how ironic eh?) series. It is because the characters are so similar with the everyday life, you are sure to enjoy it especially if you are a backbencher.

Basically this is my first novel with Indian author, the classroom activities, the professor's, mugging up, ragging, bunking so on so forth are so familiar with what we do. So go ahead and read it if you reallly want to know 'what not to do at IIT' or if you are feeling disappointed for not getting into one ( you might feel happy after reading this..).

This book is recommended to everyone.

(Brought to you from Yossarain Archives...)