Five Point Something

The past few days, I had been engaging myself with Chetan Bhagat's Five Point Someone. The book, captioned What not to do at IIT with the accent on 'not', is about the life of three friends all of whom choose to try and debunk the system, and finally end up with measly five point something CGPAs.

Though the book is passable as a light and fast read, it came as a slight disappointment to me. The book, much touted (by the author himself in a couple of places) to be an IIT book, appears to be more about the life about three friends; IIT and its culture is relegated to the hazier background of the canvas. The author is probably entitled to his take on student life, or, more specifically, his life at IIT; but to hype it by calling it an IIT book or what not to do at IIT is, I find, a little ludicrous. There would have been more titular relevance had it been sub-titled 'What not to do at college'. Showing a cold shoulder to acads, vodka, pot and grass, wooing a Professor's daughter, sneaking away with exam papers... surely not everyone in the IITs or BITS adopts them as their quotidian principles or necessities (Okay. BITS is a different case altogether! And there are not enough Professors in a University either; anyway not those who have wooable daughters.). I'm sure the author would have ended up just as hapless had he taken to all of that in some Maadha Engineering college! One would do well to read the book bargaining for merely the the college lives of three students; to consider the IIT backdrop to be an incidental. That way, I guess, one will chew on it in a haler spirit.

The book is interspersed with patches of the typical IIT-ish well-engineered wit and is a smooth and pacy read. And, to give the devil it's due, it made me a shade reminiscent about college. But on the whole, I will not gulp down my shaving cream if the peeved IITian rates the book some five point something.

- posted by Dileepan @ 6:56:00 pm

Lampoons:
Post a Comment