book summary

Chetan Bhagat – the name inspires the readers (I thought so until this one). Many followed their writing dreams after reading him and he opened the Indian literary world to the masses. He was a revolution himself when he wrote Five Point Someone, One Night @ the Call Center, The 3 Mistakes of My Life and 2 States!

The Revolution went haywire somehow midway with the Revolution 2020!

The story is set in one of the pious cities of India – Varanasi or Banaras. It is a story about 3 friends – Gopal, Raghav and Aarti.

It begins with Gopal crashing down after some pegs of drink and our writer friend is left with no other option but to take him hospital, because he won’t get up on his own (!!)  and thus begins the story as a flashback.

Gopal – he is the director of the Ganga Tech College, too young to be a director and only a graduate!!

Raghav – Gopal’s school friend

Aarti – Gopal’s school friend and love interest of both Gopal & Raghav

First chapter gives an impression the book would be a sweet story of 3 buddies. The first scene is set in the school when Gopal & Raghav are stealing lunch boxes during the assembly time and the first victim is our lady “Aarti” and thus begins the everlasting friendship of these 3. The book has been divided into various sections.

Gopal comes from a middle class family whose father is a teacher and the family doesn’t have much income as such. His mother had passed away when he was 4 years old. His father wants him to be an engineer. After all, engineers earn decent money. Whether Gopal manages to become engineer or not is another story altogether?

All 3 grow up together with their own dreams and share of problems.

Both Raghav and Gopal appear together for AIEEE & JEE for engineering and Raghav clears his exams whereas Gopal could not make to any of the engineering colleges. After mulling over all options, he decides to appear again for the exams and goes all the way to Kota for coaching classes leaving his ailing father alone and his love interest.

As it is suppose to happen, Gopal being away for a long time, these gives an opportunity to Raghav and Aarti being together and seal their relationship. When Gopal gets to know, he is devastated and again as it generally happens, his grades fall (well, typical Bollywood style) and then again he starts all over again from scratch. Coaching over, he is back in town; results fail him again. His father also passes away one fine day leaving him in debt from top to bottom. Lonely and devastated, he decides to attend a local college on the advice of one of the friends from coaching classes, and here he meets Sunil. This is the turning point of the story. Sunil takes him to local MLA – Shukla. Thus, begins the story of Gopal as the Director of Ganga Tech College in Varanasi. This portion if full of political drama, agricultural land being converted into college, bribery at all level and we name it, we have it. Along with this, we have Raghav, who is not interested in joining a MNC after completing his engineering but wants to be a journalist and wants to bring the revolution in India. He wants to change the scenario of the country. Then, there is Aarti who wants to be an air hostess but becomes a front desk officer at one of the reputed hotels in Varanasi.

Amidst all this, Raghav doesn’t have time for Aarti and fate again brings Gopal and Aarti together.  What happens next? Whom does Aarti finally marry? What happens to Raghav? Does he become a hot shot journalist? What happens to Gopal as a Director? What happens to his college? All these questions and many more; to find out the answers one needs to read the book.

However, this is not one of the best works of Chetan Bhagat. Period.  As a reader, I felt the story is boring, it is a typical stuff which each one of knows and I believe has seen many a times in our Bollywood movies or even T.V Serials. I guess that we have so much of overdose of corruption and bribery in our country that reading it in a novel does not excite anyone.  The story actually drags. There are no twists and turns, it is just so very predictable. After “2 States”, the expectation was more but some where the book fails to meet that expectation. I have read all the books of Chetan Bhagat, and I must admit for an otherwise quick reader, this one took me so much time to finish it and it was a sheer disappointment. I am still confused, as to why it is named as Revolution 2020? May be the newspaper columns he writes these days have influenced the writer in CB and he ended up loosing his original flavor.

I suggest, please read the book without any expectation, you may actually like it then.

My verdict – As a reader I expected a lot more! And as a writer, Mr.Bhagat could have done a better job or at least tried doing so.

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Author:  Deepak Karamungikar

Format: papaerback 

Language: English

Pages: 136

Price: 100/-

Publishers: A S Arts

Deepak considers “”love at first sight & other stories” as a memorable selection of his very own choicest blog posts that have been a apart of his “Stochastic Chronology”. The blog that claimed the attention of several online blog readers ran from February 2009 and ended in July 2010. With applause streaming in from all corners, the man behind the show had to preserve some of the eye catches in the form of a book. It is a great initiative- to write a book for the sake of keeping art alive, so as to say.

Penning down poems is easy, for if you have the thought running inside you, if you have the power to assemble the prodigal words, scribbling in out becomes a piece of cake with a cherry as a topping- with assorted pouring out?- voila! That’s like a creamy punch! The same unfortunately cannot be said for novels, shorter- novellas- shorter- short stories (keeping aside 55 flash fiction –the newest Twenty-twenty member of the fiction world. Looking for mystery, illusion, intrigue, fun and conceit- Deepak assembles all of it in each of his masterpieces. You have characters turning into ghostly apparitions, gamble hub frequenters avenging each other. Elite socialites living starry existence and as readers, you can just marvel at it with awe.  Having said this, at one point of time, they end up revealing their murky façade. Foolery and champagne follow in abundance, until you reach the remote nooks of civilization, where New Yorkers end up throwing their life at stakes of belle apparitions, and serial killers throttle beauties in confusion.

“Love at first sight”- comprises of unique selections like “Love at first sight”, “The Gambler”, “The Prince of Vijaypur”, “The Third Life”, “Summer of 1999”, “The Painter”, “The Fling”, “The Disorder”, “The Rebel” and“Alighted Doves”.

I would say, it is a good pick, the cover will make you think, but the stories will keep you rooted off your mind. Please don’t expect vampires and mermaids peeping from the pages, it is simply about real folks living among us, it is not a growing up series of shorts- if you are trying to learn how to sum up a story line in a couple of pages- BookMark “Love at first Sight”- for your book shelves.

About The Author:

(This was taken directly from the author’s website, on the request of the author.)

“I’m Deepak Karamungikar. I was born and brought up in Hyderabad, India where I now live with my parents, wife Bhavana and daughter Akshata. I like Pink Floyd, The Doors and Led Zeppelin in that order. I’m an MBA by accident and a writer by choice. I like narrating stories and hope to capture the reader’s imagination with every sentence I write. Other passions include Al Pacino, Ram Gopal Varma, food, beverages, gossiping and humor.”

Further Details:

Website: www.karamungikar.com

Fb profile: Deepak Karamungikar-Ledfloyddoors

Email id: Deepak.harsha@gmail.com

Twitter: @deepak_narrates

Link to book: eBay- Love-First-Sight-OtherStories-Deepak-Karamungikar

my ratings: 3.75/5

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If you liked “If God was a Banker” and “Devil in Pinstripes”, here is another fiction based on banking world. But can Puneet Gupta,  author of The Suicide Banker, bring a final balance sheet that adeptly handles various characters, their personal life and the banking environment? I am going to give the bank book audit for book lovers.

The protagonist, Sumit Sharma, makes a career shift from the safety net of public bank to the world of private bank, a working culture that can be quiet rewarding but in  pressure cooker environment. The book narrates  the upheavals both in his personal and professional life during this period.  So typically we have here a young working parent struggling to balance work and family, the protagonist’s banking principles and outlook clashing directly with his bank’s wisdom of  “turning conventional wisdom upside down” , a young assistant thrown into the picture, ambitious colleagues who considers him too old-fashioned and rigid and a banking market that can turn hot potato anytime. So the stage is set for a filmy masala story.

Sumit’s bank, Ind-Credit Bank, is on a phenomenonl growth thanks to the mega successful Agri-business venture, an out of box biz model, scripted by it’s executive director, Mohit Sharma. When the going is stupendous and with markets on a high, Sumit joins the bank as Head-credit monitoring.  Soon, he picks up holes that annoys most of his colleagues who are intoxicated by ambitions and success. Shalini, his wife, finally picks up her career again after being a house wife for couple of years and joins as a journalist in a local media channel.  With both deep neck at work, quality of family life suffers. Enter  Annie, young simple girl who lost her father recently, as assistant to Sumit. Pretty soon,  things change both in personal life and professional life and slow tremors build up only to be released with a force.

For a first time author, Puneet has digged well into his banking background to base the story. But then like Puneet mentions in the novel,  the impact of statistics can always be interpreted differently so is the impact of the story on the readers.  Average readers might find the banking industry dynamics in the novel bit dragging.  The protagonist is not your dynamic, charged up hero.  He is like many of us in real life – A middle class man with certain rigidness,  few principles that he would cling to inspite of few other weakness that might threaten his fundamentals.  The character could be a plus and minus point of the script  and it all depends how you look at the story from your perspective.  Like the characters of the story, even the author struggles to find a balance between the personal and professional side of the protagonist. After some spicy build up,  Sumit – Annie’s relation  is conveniently forgotten, so is Alec Steward, ex-bf of Annie who also works in Sumit’s team. Excusing few corny lines and a slight uneasiness while shifting between professional and personal stories,  the language and narrative style of Puneet is fluid.

GingerChai Verdict: The Banker is definitely not a God but nevertheless an affable banker with normal human strengths and weakness that you can identify with.Read it, if you are a fan of  fiction based on banking backdrop.

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Every book has it way of appealing to the readers. With young adult books ragging the market and imagination of budding authors running free among the clouds- readers are indeed most benefited. Ishaan Lalit’s debut book- “the Bracelet” creates a sensation of mystery and thrill- with an aura that sucks in a reader through its first few gripping pages. When we are talking about fantasy, we are essentially thinking of young Potters shuffling their lives between the Muggle world and Hogwarts. Ishaan gets into more serious business, his alternate world is the venue of intense action, fatal and threatening, conjuring levels of implied danger which only the brave hearts can survive through, yes we are talking about the Alpha and Omega levels.

Abhay, the protagonist, faints, runs a raging fever of 107 and the doctors fail to ascertain reason behind all this. Their innocence is justified to the readers because he can see what the others cannot. Imagine yourself as a witness embedded somehow in the Oscar winning movie “the gladiator” and even you will feel the elephant grass fields witnessing a pursuit, an ambush and eventually become a part of a long standing episode of a battle fought between two antagonistic groups. Ishaan involves lost brothers and loved-ones, involves politics and its dirty tricks that oscillate its power among both the worlds. A serious take is further given to the involvement of machines that transports seekers armed with an Arrow to a world where spirits would kill them in seconds and their arch rival the ArthRakshaks following at heels to overpower them. “The Bracelet” speaks volumes and weaves a plot noteworthy to keep the readers looking out for the peril the protagonist and his friends face at every turn.

But whom will you trust, your college buddy, who is faking the bond itself, or the family who keeps secrets from you? It not just a quest for Abhay to find reasons behind his frequent journeys to different world, it also a story that helps him realize his strength, understand his estranged brother, and stand by, what he believes to be the righteous. To reveal more will be a crime, for even, I want the readers to follow Abhay at close heels!! All I would request to the writer as a reader, is to pen down a magnificent sequel to the present intriguing tale, that triumphs just like Michael Crichton’s “Timeline”.

About the book author:

Ishaan Lalit is a twenty seven year old gemmologist, pilot, and adventurer form a multi-cultural background. He is an avid traveler and observer of human behaviour. He conceived of the bracelet while he was training in his flying school in Philippines. He lives in Delhi NCR along with his family and his three dogs. This is his first book and he is currently working on his second book. His Bracelet is racy and intriguing simply because he has mentors like Arthur C. Clarke, Richard Bach, Stephen King and Dean R. Koontz- to kindle his imagination through the alleys of mystery.

Author: Ishaan Lalit

Format: Paperback

Language: English

Pages: 160

Price: Rs. 150.00

Publishers: APK Publishers

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A Bowlful of Butterflies by Ritu Lalit is written with teenage charm and at the beginning I will suggest to read it; reasons being – it is cute (okay, it is a girl’s way to describe!); it reminds you of your teenage days and all you people who have siblings will relate to the book, once in a while we all have fought with them, shed tears with each other, tried hurting them etc. but at the end of day we just hang out together because they are the best people available out there!

The story is set in NCR region for a change and it is not so and so NRI visiting India or something like that. The story is about Chandni who is appearing for her class 12 boards with her two best friends Amrit and Soma. Readers’ will see the world through Chandu aka Chandni; what is her relationship with her friends, what happens when her friend starts seeing her cousin Jogi, the jealousy pangs; Chandu’s two elder brothers – Vicky and Vinni; the antics done by these boys.

Chandu’s world revolves round the home, school and her family and the sleepy town of Majhi Nagar. Her world goes topsy-turvy when her cousin Jogi arrives to stay with them for couple of days before he gets the room in the Enginnering College. She, Vinni and Jogi spy on Vicky and realize that he is gay and then one fine day Vicky leaves home because he wants to become a singer and he is participating in the reality contest. Admist of all, Jogi and Amrit become a couple, Soma has her own problems, Jogi’s parents are separating, his father is seeing someone and so on and so forth. Each chapter is defined, short and crisp. There is melodrama, fun, fight, love, hate….all emotions outlined clearly. Slowly, Chandu realizes her calling in life, even finds love in Avni, a guy who is 25; thankfully he also falls in love with her

As a first time book writer, there is refreshing feel to the book, no unnecessary love scenes thrown in; there is a light – hearted feel to it. It is a transition story of Chandni – a teenage girl to womanhood.

Ginger Chai verdict – Please read it, it is a sweet and cute book.

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The dearth of Indian crime fiction has been partially saved by the novel ‘Six Suspects‘ written by Vikas Swarup, better known for his novel, ‘Q and A’ that was adapted into the Oscar winning film, ‘Slumdog Millionaire.’ While ‘Q and A’ was a rather amateurish, not at all researched book with bits of faulty writing, ‘Six Suspects‘ is a tad bit better. While it has its own flaws, it is nonetheless a pretty good detective/thriller story that exposes the corrupt India and has a story that will be lavished by detective fiction lovers/fans.

The plot revolves around Vicky Rai’s (the son of the Home Minister of Uttar Pradesh) murder that took place while he was partying at his farmhouse in Delhi to celebrate his acquittal in a Jessica Lall style murder case(only in the book, the girl who was shot dead by Vicky was named Ruby Gill). There are essentially six suspects that are detained by the police as they were found carrying guns. Then, aptly, Swarup goes on and gives elaborate descriptions about all the six suspects and their motives to kill Vicky Rai. The six suspects are a motley crowd-including a sexy actress, an American,a mobile thief, Vicky’s own father, a tribal from Andaman and a former chief secretary of Uttar Pradesh. These stories are cleverly interconnected and intelligently converge at Vicky Rai’s farmhouse. In the end, an investigative journalist, Arun Advani, solves this murder mystery and the end is, I might say, quite unanticipated! The murderer is an unexpected one.

The story is well structured, with quite a few twists and turns that are definitely surprising.

Along with giving massive details about the life stories of all the six suspects, which by the way takes up a large chunk of the novel, Vikas Swarup also highlights the corruption rampant in India’s politics, displays the divide between the rich and poor and the different classes, the world of powerful contacts and influences and several more such instances that reveal the sleazy side of India.

Despite ‘Six Suspects’ being a good detective read, it still has certain weak spots. Firstly, Vikas Swarup tries to put in a lot of information about India in the novel and most of it is sadly lifted from ‘breaking news’ sessions of the Indian tv channels that can get monotonous. This aspect makes it look like ‘Six Suspects was written for foreign audiences and Swarup was aiming for this book to be made into a film as well.  It seems there is a lack of originality. Secondly, certain ideas are rather stereotyped like the American’s view of India when he comes for the first time, the bit about Islamic fundamentalists is also very cliched(all Muslims are terrorists and all that crap). Although the story has an unpredictable end, there are times when the stories of the six suspects get predictable-for example, the tribal from Andaman has to be foolish and get duped by several people in India. Why can’t the tribals be intelligent for once?And there are several such examples.

There are certain creative bits as well like the English Literature professor ,which the former Chief Secretary met in jail, who expresses himself by uttering book titles only.

So the final verdict would be that ‘Six Suspects’ is definitely worth a read, a good crime novel that unfortunately shows only a newspaper version of India and does not delve deeper into India’s chaotic soul. From the writing it becomes apparent that the India of ‘Six Suspects’ though very real still has a touch of being seen from a distant lens. The lack of research shows through. So if one knows nothing about India, one can probably grab this book to know about its underbelly and get some background on all the wrong things that happened in the country in the past decade or so.

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A Night To Remember

‘Night‘ by Elie Wiesel is not a book for the faint hearted or for those looking for a casual read. The book maybe thin but don’t judge it by the size. Its profound impact on the reader goes beyond its volume.

The book deals with the Holocaust-one of the brutal genocides in  20th century. Wiesel was just a teenager living in a nondescript town of Sighet in Transylvania when the Nazi troops came and bullied all the Jews into ghettos and eventually the concentration camp. Wiesel was separated from his mother and sisters and had only his father along with him.

‘Night‘ is a heart wrenching autobiographical account of Wiesel’s own horrifying experience in several concentration camps-from Buna to Auschwitz and eventually to Buchenwlad. It talks of unimaginable horrors that Wiesel himself suffered and saw all around him, being meted out to countless Jews in the camps. It records Wiesel’s own struggles, his gradual disillusionment in God, his numbness towards all the suffering around him, his love and support for his father and the eventual disappearance of that support, of innocence and the appearance of a self centered thinking that was sowed by the brutality he witnessed in the camps.

The reader sees the transformation that Wiesel went through and how life in the concentration camps made animals out of humans, how it sapped the hope of the most optimistic person and sapped the most devout person of his faith.

Page after page will make the reader cringe, force him/her to feel the pain, ponder on how anyone could survive such colossal pain, ponder on how such a mass genocide was allowed to take place. Hopefully the book will etch the story in the reader’s mind forever so that they never forget-Wiesel’s aim in writing this book in the first place. Hopefully, readers will remember the Holocaust, because as Wiesel puts it,”to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”(pg. XV,’Night‘ by Elie Wiesel,Hill and Wang Publication, First Edition,2006).

Moreover, what I hope the readers will take away from this book, is that we, as readers, should intervene if and when such genocides happen because Holocaust is by no means the last such genocide. They keep happening and continue even in the 21st century-the so called progressive age. It is imperative that we learn from history, from one man’s ordeal that such horrors must never be allowed to happen because that strip humans of the humanity that we are all entitled to.

Plot

Certain people in law and secret police circles are involved in morbid sex slavery and the like. Lisbeth Salander gets  into this mire and soon half a dozen people want her dead and six feet under.

Review

In the second installment of Stieg Larsson’s “Millenium trilogy”, asocial hacker Lisbeth Salander is on the run as she is a marked person. She is hunted by several parties all of which have a unique tie with each other — sex slavery. The girl who played with fire delves a little deeper into Lisbeth Salander’s morbid childhood in a broken home as her father regularly abused her mother. The last straw was when Lisbeth’s mother was knocked senseless and with a hemorrhaging brain when Lisbeth made sure that “the evil happened” to her father; picture a Molotov cocktail being tossed in after you into the car.

There are several characters and a few meandering story lines so I will break this down for you to the best of my codeine addled brain:

1) Bjorck and Bjurmann attorneys, together with Zalachenko in the seventies were part of the Swedish secret police, Sapo.

2) Zalachenko and Salander and a Molotov cocktail made from a milk carton in the early nineties, met. This resulted in Salander was thrown into an abusive asylum

3) Now Bjurmann was Salander’s guardian in the new millenium. The circle was complete.

4) Bjorck, Bjurmann and Zalachenko were all involved in sex slavery at some level or the other.

Lisbeth Salander was the woman who hated men who hate women and, by her very existence, threatened to rip the net of sex slavery wide open and hence is marked and obviously she had to be silenced. Bjurmann eventually took Zalachenko’s help to wipe Salander off the earth. Along the way our protagonist Blomkvist’s friend and fellow journalist Svensson and his wife Johansson were shot.

But why? Who is Zalachenko? How is he related to Salander?

My cryptic review aptly ends as abruptly as the book itself. I will get my hands on the final denouement and be back with a review soon, that much I promise! Until then, happy holidays!

Author: Stieg Larsson

ISBN 978-0307269980 (English)

Pages: 503

Author: Stieg Larsson

ISBN 978-1-84724-254-2 (English)

Publication date: 2005

Translated by: Reg Keeland

Pages: 480

Plot

Harriet Vanger has been missing and presumed dead for 40 years. But then why does her great uncle, Henrik Vanger, still receive one framed flower every year on his birthday, from her?

Review

Sweden may be the land of the midnight sun, blondes and the furniture manufacturers, Ikea, but Stieg Larsson’s book is anything but the pink picture painted by my opening line. “Män som hatar kvinnor” or “Men who hate women” (known as “The girl with the dragon tattoo”)  is an intricate book that exposes the murky and horrific underbelly of the fictitious Vanger corporation where almost every character above 70 is a misogynist who resorts to incarcerating, raping and mutilating women as a release for their sadistic sexual tension.

The story follows disgraced journalist, Mikael Blomkvist who has recently lost a libel case against one Wennerström corporation and takes on the Henrik Vanger’s offer of investigating the death or disappearance of his grand-niece, Harriet Vanger over 40 years ago.

Along the way his path crosses that of Lisbeth Salander, an asocial punk-type who also happens to be a brilliant hacker. As the unlikely duo team up to uncover the truth about Harriet Vanger’s death or disappearance, they also uncover the secretive, misogynistic and sadistic vile life of a member of the Vanger family.

It is very difficult to summarize the book without giving away all the intricate yet shocking details that would be revealed as one reads the book. The book itself isn’t a spectacular work of literature as obviously it has been translated from Swedish to English and literal translation always fails at several steps. Also, the beginning and the end of the books pale in comparison to the fast paced middle but are quite paramount (obviously!).

It is worth a read and I look forward to reading the second in the series “Flickan som lekte med elden” or “The girl who played with fire”.

Author: Agatha Christie

Lead Character: Hercule M. Poirot

Genre: Fiction, Crime Thriller, Murder Mystery

Who do you think is the best detective character after Sherlock Holmes? Do you even know other characters? Well, in case you don’t know let me introduce to you Hercule M. Poirot, A Belgian by Birth but settled in UK and he does best what he does – solving Mysteries. Kudos to Agatha Christie for having brought Poirot to light.

Talking about the book, Dead Man’s Folly is a story based in the 1950’s in UK. Ariadne Oliver is an author  who specializes in Mystery books. Her Services are called upon by Mr. and Mrs. Sir George Stubs, a noveau rich war hero who now owns the Famous Nasse House.

Nasse house is organizing a garden fete and Ms. Oliver is called upon to arrange a new game, a Murder mystery, more like a treasure hunt where the participants work their way through the clues until they reach boat house where a local girl is enacting a dead body. Ms Ariadne Oliver is glad and up and about her work. But something is not right. She feels someone is making her do things as a part of the mystery game that will help him/her/them to meet their end objectives. At this point she seeks the help of her old friend M. Poirot to help her and to prevent the murder if it actually takes place.

But the girl in boat house is murdered, so are the other people. Hercule Poirot, though not able to prevent the murder doesn’t give up until he solves the mystery and finds the culprit.

I would not say that this is one of the best adventures of Poirot and definitely not one of the best books by Agatha Christie. There is not much of depth to the characters and the clues provided are a bit obscure. The description of the mansions and building at a point gets drab but nevertheless, once Poirot begins putting the pieces into the puzzle that it gets interesting.

If you are interested in detective works and if you are big Christie fan and if you want to relive the Sherlock-Holmes-Like stories, then go for it. It is definitely worth one read.