Along The Way - Review

 Author: TGC Prasad

The story starts at NIT Calicut where the protagonist Venkat(who is from AP) gets job in TCS, along with his friends Raj and Adi. During that time Venkat meets Anjali(who is from Coorg), who also got an offer from the same company. She is the daughter of the retired colonel Krishna Cariappa. The love story between Venkat and Anjali starts there. Later the story shifts to TCS, Bangalore office and the rest is about the problems they faced in TCS and how the relation among the friends changed due to various situations. The last few chapters are mostly about how Venkat and Anjali managed their families to agree to their marriage, even though there are cultural and other differences between them.

 The writing style is lucid and elegant. Readers can relate to themselves in many parts of the story especially those working in IT field. If you are not related to this field some terms may appear Greek and Latin. This is not a master piece but is good enough for time-pass on weekends.

What I liked:

• Writing style.
• Description of the life in software field and hilarious witty comments on the managers and HR professionals there. The comments are really funny.
• Interaction scenes of Venkat and Raj with Manikantan Doraiswamy(proj manager) and Amit( HR guy).

What I din’t like:

• The second half of the story is quite predictable and it reminds me of ‘2states’ which has similar situation involving families from two different states. The conversations between Venkat and colonel Krishna, Anjali’s father, are tad boring.
• The book would have been much better if it was restricted to around 280 pages.
• Normal price of this book is Rs.295, which is on the very high end. There are many good books available in similar genre at much lower price. If you buy at discount on Infibeam then it is ok. Even Flipkart’s price is quite high.
• Venkat likes to irritate Raj by hugging him. This hugging act appeared in more situations than needed.

If you like Chetan Bhagat style of books then there is no reason why you wouldn’t like this one. Surely this one will become a bestseller. This book is like a 350 pages of movie script. I heard there could be a movie based on this.

This is the second book by the author after his first one “Unusual people do things differently”..a non-fiction, on the lives of 65 people who did things differently.  

About the Author:   T.G.C. Prasad lives in Bangalore and offers strategic, advisory, general management and HR consulting services to several start-ups, small and medium enterprises, Indian and MNC companies. He also offers executive coaching to senior management.