After all the hype about this book (supposed to have sold a 5 million copies - pre-booking, including mine ;) ), it wasn't disappointing, at the same time did not probably live upto the title or expectations!
Whats good?
The story is good... The story of Gopal, a 26-year old, the youngest Director of an engineering college who'd have stopped studies at 12th after two failed attempts at getting a decent score for admissions into IITs or NITs. His father, poor and ill, wants to see his son become an engineer and pours in all the money he has(and also borrows from a politician at a high rate of interest) for that purpose. Gopal, bitten by the love bug, apparently loses control over his life when he learns that Aarti, his childhood crush, had chosen his friend Raghav over him. Like all bad things happen at the same time, he ends up in a bad company where he gets addicted to alcohol and smoking habits and wastes all his time and money over it. His lack of concentration on his studies turns him into a "failure". His father passes away on knowing his son couldn't make it to the top colleges, leaving Gopal
1. a piece of land he had fought keeping for several years (a kind of sentiment farmers generally have) and
2. responsibility of clearing a huge amount of loan from a MLA, which his father would've borrowed to get Gopal trained to crack JEE/AIEEE
When the MLA learns about the land Gopal possesses, he has an idea of turning it into an engineering college. He also succeeds to do so, following all illegal means to get the required grants and permissions from several concerned authorities and makes Gopal the director of the college.
Raghav on the other hand, manages to clear JEE with flying colors but gets admitted to a local college and his primary interest and passion is journalism. He starts off writing for college magazine and eventually ends up in a job of an editor in a local popular newspaper. As part of his job, he tries to uncover the MLA's involvement in various scams (would have interviewed Gopal too, who had by then, become a pretty pal of the MLA) and makes a great story that sells like hot chocolate. The MLA is enraged and uses his powers to take away Raghav's job. For Gopal it seems Raghav is setting up his beloved MLA due to a personal grudge on him and Jealousy (that Gopal, inspite of being a college drop out is now ten fold richer than Raghav, who was supposed to be earning good having cracked JEE) and takes things personally. On losing his job, Raghav starts off his own newsletter called "Revolution 2020" that exposes the MLA's frauds and scams that finally lands him up in the jail.
While Raghav is busy with his new project, Aarti feels abandoned and ignored and she begins to feel Gopal would have been a right choice for her and they get together. Gopal, after winning over his childhood crush feels the greatest sense of achievement ever and waits to crack the news to Raghav. When he visits Raghav's office to do so, what he notices there, changes his premonitions about Raghav completely. Though initially, Gopal is portrayed to be a little low rated, towards the end, his gentleness unfolds and the story takes a new turn...
Whats lacking?
Chetan's usual dry sarcasm and sense of humour is poor when compared to his other stories.
Though it doesn't live so much upto the title, it unveils Indian annoying politics and kind of reflects the recent attempts by the activists in our country to eradicate corruption and the author sees that such an effort would pay off sooner or later, a positive approach for the betterment of this country. Bollywood directors could be interested! :)
8/10 for this one!
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on Thursday, October 20, 2011
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