Book Bash(ing)

Chetan Bhagath had achieved “Cult Status” after his success with 5 Point Someone. I liked 5 Point Someone, even though the book lacks in style and story. The story is nothing close to reality but is funny nonetheless. For a really long time like a million others (IIT aspirants who did not make it to IIT and non IIT aspirants) I thought the book was excellent. It depicted the general feeling of students who were repelled by the system which cowed them and made them slog like buffaloes in the field on a hot sunny afternoon without being given a drop of water till ALL the work was done and when the work was done the same was never appreciated. There is always a shortcoming, there are always “you could have done better”, “Improvement needed”, “You just deteriorated the standards”, “I expect more from you”. But the system is not half as bad as it is portrayed in the book. I blame all the three characters for being so utterly foolish. It is really ridiculous to think that working for an entrance exam and making it to your dream college is enough. Every student’s reality is that you slog and you slog always. There is no escaping the work as long as you want to enjoy all the perks that come with being in a prestigious institution. In reality nobody would do what the characters of 5PS did unless they were way too impressed by the way the book ends or thought that they were meant to be the story- either which way is extremely foolhardy but who is to explain practicality to fools?

He then wrote One night @ the call centre which became more famous. This book really made me realize that CB was a fraud. He played with same idea the second time. This time it wasn’t IIT but a Call Centre. That’s when I decided that this man cannot write a book for peanuts and the only reason why people actually read the book was probably to know more about defying the system at the Call centre or because they liked 5PS. But it wasn’t so was it?

Having considerably gone down on my list, I wasn’t too keen on reading Three Mistakes. But paying no heed to my own judgment I started reading the book. I did not get past page 4. Enough said.

If I were to write a book with the same title, it would be summed up in one page. You just read "The Three Mistakes of My Life ":)

Then I read Amit Varma’s- My Friend Sancho. If I had to draw similarity between CB and AV here is what I found:
1. Pink Floyd
2. Sex
3. Men cannot think beyond Sex
4. The Man always gets the woman. [If any man were like any of the male characters depicted by either authors trust me the kind of girl depicted by either authors would not want those men (That is again if they are as intelligent as they are made out to be in the book) ]
5. They need a whole new genre for themselves i call it "Fictioner than fiction". [Harry Potter is more believable than the books these two have written.]

My friend calls CB a pervert. She hasn’t read AV and I hope she doesn’t either.

Then come authors like Amitav Gosh, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Anurag Mathur, Sidharth Dhanvant Sanghvi, Shashi Tharoor[All of whom are definitely better than the desi Booker Prize winners.] and you wonder how Arundathi Roy who wrote a book that had everything from communism to pedophiles to incest all put together to make a really yucky tasting avial of sorts or Kiran Desai about whom I have said enough already and Jhumpa Lahiri who wrote a very insipid collection of stories ALL won the Booker Prize!

It is always the same. Some of the best authors do not get the recognition they deserve. People think all good books boil down violent behavior,violent thoughts, violent actions and violent words. These authors have been put on a pedestal because they have tried to capture "grief" and "suffering" of a person. I think writing anything simple, sensible and a story of quality which is fiction but is not too far away from reality is far tougher than just writing a hodgepodge of incidents.

I am done with Indian Fiction. I am going to stick to reading a few comics for a while after which I begin my quest for books by Germans on the holocaust. It struck me after watching The Reader, that I have never really read anything about World War II from the German perspective.

My friend suggested I read Maus by Art Spiegelman , I wikied it and it reminded me of Orwell’s Animal Farm. I guess I’ll read just one more book by a Jew and then read what the Germans have to say.

P.S: When I mentioned all those authors who won the Booker prize I would have liked to include Arvind Adiga. But as I have not read his book nor do I intend to, it is unwise to give my point of view on the same. But you could read here for more.