Complexvanilla was having suffering from another bout of insomnia when he happened to chance across 'Five Point Someone', a book which he had religiously avoided reading, as all things overrated put him off, and this was a book that he felt, was certainly all hype and publicity, like the crap Arindham Choudhary dishes out.
A couple of hours zipped by with no signs of approaching sleep and the book continued to hold interest and CV continued to plough through it. Five hours after he started with the cover page, the last page had been turned. The book was over. CV gave a yawn and reflected on the story. This post is not a spoiler of the book, nor is it intened to be a review, but it intends to dissect the book to find out what led to it's success and popularity, and whether it truly deserved it.
Three dudes with contrasting natures come together as hostel mates in the hostel of IIT Delhi. The book is about their adventures and misadventures. With one of the characters (Ryan) portrayed as an Indian version of Ayn Rand's Howard Roark (some seqeunces seem to be lifted straight out of Rand's Fountainhead - for instance, Roark speaks out against the need to copy the Parthenon while Ryan speaks out against the need to copy the design of a car-jack. So very original! ) and the dialogs straight out of hostels and college campuses, it cultivated the fan following of the college crowd. The second wave was created by people who just had to read or be able to claim to read what the 'in-crowd' was reading so they took to reading it. The book has an intriguing love story woven in it - or so the people said. CV was rubbing his eyes in total disbelief. Since when did women start asking to be taken out by slightly overweight strangers whom they happened to knock down on the road? Offering a lift is one thing, but an offer to go out for ice-cream? Either that was one desperate girl or the author was indulging in some bizarre fantasy. Or maybe the author wants to say that women hit on IITians even if they look like shit? Maybe. In any case, disbelief, suspended or otherwise did not stop CV from reading the whole damn book.
So, anything interesting at all??
Yeah, CV thougt that the timelines adopted in this book were different. There are three timelines in this book. One is set in the past, when the adventures and misadventures occured. The last two pages bring out the remaining two timelines: Hari, when talking about Neha (The Girl), says that he can now say what happened between the two of them (current timeline) and says that it is irrelevant and goes on to another timeline (intermediate timeline) in which Neha is yet to arrive in Mumbai where Hari-boy is chilling out. So, the mystery is whether Neha and Hari stuck together? Hardly. If that were to be the case, the author could have just done with two timelines, finishing off with a Hollywood style credits line, with a quick description about everybody, something like 'Ryan is currently a full time researcher in lubricant technology while Alok is happily married with a fat kid to boot, Neha and Hari went on to sire a foot-ball team' and so on and so forth, but the peculiar nature of the third timeline indicates that things did not go all that rosily with the couple.
Verdict? Overrated, as initially suspected, but is worth a read, if you have a couple of hours to kill and no TV, PC or laptop anywhere near.
