Five point someone

Five Point Someone is the maiden novel of Chetan Bhagat , the IIT / IIM graduate turned Author , whose novel “ One night @ Call centre ” was quiet a hit with the Indian readers (but not with me) and was later made into a flop movie “Hello”.

Honestly , I was not quiet impressed by his “ One night @ Call center ” novel , well am not writing a review on it because its quiet a long ago I read it and do not want to revisit it for a review. We had ordered “Five Point Someone” thanks to Citibank reward points.

The book is also currently in limelight because Amir Khan is acting in a movie “Three Idiots” directed by Rajkumar Hirani (who gave the classic munnabhai series ) based on this novel. So I thought that Five point someone must have some good point, if an actor like Amir khan is impressed by it.

Five Point Someone is based on a three lead character’s life – Hari , Ryan and Alok during their IIM college days. Simple , Isn’t it ? After reading it , I felt watching an 80’s movie based on college days ! Nothing new. Nothing exciting . Just a simple, time-pass novel. The three students mess up with their grades and find themselves on the average grades (five point grades out of 10 ) that explains the five point part of the title. Each one characteristically different from each other but become best of buddies and the story narrates chapter to chapter how they mess up their study days and in between a love track between Hari and a professor’s daughter, Neha. There is nothing great about the story, makes me wonder how Chetan bhagat became to be one rated as biggest selling English language novelist in India’s history! There are far better works than his. Or is it like Indian movies? A blockbuster movie does not necessarily mean a great quality movie, right ?! One good point though reading Chetan Bhagat’s novels gave a glimmer of hope to my wife and me that one day we could also become a writer !!!

I wonder what made Amir Khan agree to do this movie. Having read the novel, am eager to see how Amir khan manages to work around this story into a movie of his kind ! Going my the characterization , Amir Khan must be playing Hari , Madhavan as Alok , Sharman Joshi as Ryan , Boman Irani the Head of Department , and Kareena Kapoor as Neha.

Update ( July ‘05 ,2209) : It seems Amir khan is playing Ryan , Madhavan as Hari and Sharman as Alok .

My verdict: Do read it, if you get it free. Read it, if you have time to kill and no better books to read. Ok ok time pass.