One Terrible Book

To all Indian girls

Especially the ones

Who dare to dream

And live life on their own terms.

To all the women in my life,

Thank you for being there.

                                                                                                                          - Chetan Bhagat

               Now I will totally insult you by writing this horrible book.              

                        After reading an excellent book (The Hammer of Thor, by Rick Riordan which will be reviewed at a later date), I thought I would see what the fuss was about Chetan Bhagat. Now I know. I will first explain the premise of the book. Radhika, a 26 year old, is getting married to a guy she has met exactly twice, i.e if you include the one Skype session. But, both her exes land up in Goa and both of them want to marry her. She has to decide which one of the three guys to marry. 

                    The story is quite simple. But the author takes it few steps...... down. Yeah, that's right. The simple story is made as insipid and bland as possible. No Chetan Bhagat book is complete without a reference of IIMA or IIT. And the main character has to be a fake nerd. I hate it when authors do that. True nerds(like me) don't aspire to become non nerds. They don't think they are not cool. But this book does exactly that. The so-called nerdy girl shaves her leg hair and the book milks as much as it can from that very thing. 

                      The language in the book is far from the English that we know and love. Shows that the author doesn't know much about the language. I usually don't bother much about grammar. When you write a book, you need to include colloquial terms and in India, those are not in English. But seriously, the dialogues in the book look like they have been pasted from Google Translate which has translated it from Hindi and we all know how efficient Google Translate is. 

     

                         Chetan Bhagat tried to be a feminist but turns out he doesn't know much about it either. He wants to empower the woman by giving her the power to make the decision but then makes her weak enough that she remains a kept woman for a year with a man, who we are reminded again and again, is only 10 years younger than her father, 5 years younger than her mother and 20 years older than her. Oh, I almost forgot, he also has a cute little family and a wife whom he met when Radhika was 5 years old. The other suitor isn't charming either. The number of times he says 'baby' alone is enough any sensible girl to throw him out no matter how "puppy-like" his eyes look.                    

                         
                         But, I am a very generous guy when it comes to books. I am sort of happy as long as the end is a good one. So this book is OK. I would recommend this book to every book reader and then ask them to read Rick Riordan so they know what's good and what's garbage.

                         Here are a few quotes before the final rating:

‘Well, I only chose to have a grand wedding like this.’

He had innocent teacher’s-pet eyes.

‘You don’t want a Brazilian?’ Catherine asked me. ‘It is only fifteen dollars more.’ ‘What’s that?’ I said. Catherine rolled her eyes. (This is so funny, how could Radhika not know? Hahahaha!)

‘What else am I? Mistresses at least get some rights and privileges. I am worse, actually.’ ‘You are no mistress. You make your own money. Mistresses take money from the man. They are dependent. You do it out of choice.’

If Debu was French fries, this was a gourmet six-course meal. If Debu was beer, this was champagne. If Debu was a boat, this was a luxury cruise. Stop comparing, and what’s with the weird analogies?

Now for the rating:

3/10  -  Below average.