The Guide by R K Narayan

Author: R. K. Narayan

Price: 100/-

Pages: 247

My Rating: 5/5

Story:

This is narrated alternating between past and present of the protagonist, Raju.

Present:

After the release of the Raju from the jail after two years, because of few incidents the villagers consider him as a Swami and will start worshipping him. Though Raju couldn't bear the expectations of the villagers, he decides to take the Swami role to lead his life in comfort. 

Past:

Raju was born and brought up in Malgudi, is a popular tourist guide. One day a person visits the village along with his wife, Rosie, who is a Bharatha Natyam enthusiast but kept her interest aside because of her husband. Swami meets them at the railway station, and gets attracted towards Rosie from the moment he saw her. He arranges everything for their stay and guides the couple to various places. Meanwhile, the bond between Raju and Rosie strengthens.   

Did Raju get his dream girl, who was already married ?

Did Rosie pursue her interest in dance ?

How did the relation of Raju with Rosie turn into ?

What changes did their relation brought in both of their lives ? 

How did Rosie's husband react ?

Did Raju's interest in Rosie lasted till the end ?

Why did Raju land in jail ?

How did Raju's life as a Swami proceeded ?

My Opinion: 

This book will make us forget everything and take us through a mesmerising journey along with the story, filled with emotions, nail biting situations, leaving us in a trance even after reading the book. 

The way R. K. Narayan narrated the story, the way he formed the sentences, the way he infused the humour, the way he portrayed the emotions of the protagonist, the way he described situations and surroundings, the way he build the suspense till the end..everything is magical.

Conclusion:

Do not miss this book.

"The Sense Of an Ending" by Julian Barnes

Author: Julian Barnes.

  

Publisher: Vintage Books.

  

Price: Rs.499 (Hard Cover) and Rs.299 (Paperback)

  

Pages: 150

My Rating: 5/5

Masterpiece – is the right word to describe this Booker Prize Winner “The Sense Of An Ending” by Julian Barnes.

Blurb:

Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit. Maybe Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life.

Now Tony is in middle age. He’s had a career and a single marriage, a calm divorce. He’s certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer’s letter is about to prove.

My opinion:

Tony, sixty years old, divorced in middle age, living alone maintaining a friendly relation with his ex-wife, is the protagonist of this novel (or you may call novella). The book starts with Tony’s memories in school and then in college with his friends Colin, Alex and Adrian. He recollects how his relation with Veronica, his girl friend in college, and with Adrian ended after introducing Veronica to his friends one day.

While Tony was leading a peaceful life in his old age, he receives a letter, from a lawyer, which again pokes his forgotten memories. The letter says that Veronica’s mother left a small amount of money for him after her death. This issue leads Tony to the facts that happened in the past, which he never even dreamt of.

Read the book to know...What is the thing that Tony came to know?? Is that letter just about money left to him or does it have anything else with it?? Why did Veronica’s mother leave money to Tony?? What happened to Adrian’s life?? 

Some of the lines I liked are…

• When we are young we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old we invent different pasts for others. 
• If you want to make people pay attention to your voice you don’t raise your voice but lower it: that is what really commands.
• Most of us make an instinctive decision, then build up an infrastructure of reasoning to justify it.
• Marriage is a long dull meal with the pudding served first.
• Reward of merit is not life’s business.
• The less time there remains in your life, the less time you want to waste it.
• History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.

I picked this one seeing the beautiful cover page and the “Man Booker Prize Winner" tag. Though the story is waferthin the author beautifully portrayed the minute emotions of an old person.This will leave you wanting for more. 

The Author will take the reader on a journey deep into Tony's memories and his reflections on them. Each and every sentence in the book has prose, purpose and adds value to the story. The book starts as a collection of memories of an old person but picks up pace and ends in thriller style.

Conclusion:

Insightful. Unputdownable. Go for this. Worth reading again and again. Enjoy. 

You can get the paperback on Flipkart for just Rs.224 here and hard cover for Rs.349 here.

My Book List - 2011(May-Dec)

List of books I have read since May and my ratings...


NON FICTION

Good

• The McKinsey Way - Ethan M. Rasiel 
• It Happened In India - Kishore Biyani
• Simply Fly - Captain Gopinath
• Delivering Happiness: A Path To Profits, Passion And Purpose - Tony Hsieh
• Blue Ocean Strategy: How to create uncontested market space and make the competition irrelevant  - W.Chan Kim
• The Goal -Eliyahu M.Goldratt, Jeff Cox
• The Winning Way -  Harsha Bhogle, Anita Bhogle
• I Have A Dream - Rashmi Bansal
• On Writing - Stephen King
• The Dip: The Little Book That Teaches You When To Quit - Seth Godin
• Poke The Box - Seth Godin
• The Polyester Princess: The rise of Dhirubhai Ambani - Hamish McDonald
• Unusual People Do Things Differently - TGC Prasad
• Courage: The Joy Of Living Dangerously - Osho 
• Freedom: The Courage To Be Yourself - Osho

Average

• The Bootstrappers Bible - Seth Godin
• The Dream: How I learned The Risks And Rewards Of Entrepreneurship - Gurubaksh Chahal
• Plot & Structure - James Scot Bell
• Wings Of Fire - A P J Abdul Kalam
• Rich Dad Poor Dad -  Robert T. Kiyosaki

Bad

• Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch: Theory In Management - Arindam Chauduri

FICTION

Good

• The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
• Love Story - Erich Segal 
• Life Is What You Make It - Preeti Shenoy
• God Save The Dork - Sidin Vadukut
• Revolution 2020 - Chetan Bhagat
• Love, Life and All that jazz - Ahmed Faiyaz
• I am Not Twenty Four...I have been nineteen for five years - Sachin Garg
• The Goat, the Sofa and Mr Swami - Chandrasekar R 
• Chanakya's Chant - Ashwin Sanghi
• Train To Pakistan - Kushwant Singh 
• The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
• The Last Man In Tower - Aravind Adiga
• Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach
• To Kill A Mocking Bird - Lee Harper

Average

• Illusions - Richard Bach
• The Alchemist  - Paulo Coelho 
• Dork: The Incredible Adventures Of Robin ' Einstein' Varghese - Sidin Vadukut
• Along The Way - TGC Prasad
• The Quest For Nothing - Anand Anurag
• Reality Bites - Anand Anurag
• Urban Shots - Paritosh Uttam 
• One Night At The Call Center- Chetan Bhagat 
• A Roller Coaster Ride - Saumil Shrivastava  
• Between The Assasinations - Aravind Adiga

Bad

• Few Things Left Unsaid - Sundeep Nagarkar 
• Can Love Happen Twice - Ravinder Singh 
• 34 Bubble Gums And Candies - Preeti Shenoy
• My Friend Sancho - Amit Verma
• Horn OK Please... Hopping To Conclusions - Karthik Iyengar

Currently Reading...

• Direct From Dell - Michael Dell
• Rework - Jason Fried
• Fortune At The Bottom Of The Pyramid - C K Prahalad

Unusual People Do things Differently - Review

Author : T.G.C.Prasad

Price   : 399/-

Publishers: Penguin Book India

My Rating : 4/5

The description on the back of this book is very apt. So I am pasting here the same :

Unusual people are ordinary people who strive hard to do extraordinary things. They are sensitive to nuances, look to provide lateral solutions, dare to think out of the box, and often end up changing the rules of the game.

T.G.C. Prasad presents the views and experiences of sixty-five individuals, from well-known names like Mike Lawrie, Azim Premji and Mother Teresa to a chef, a masseuse and a service boy, with whom he has had meaningful interactions and who have inspired him. He includes people from a broad professional spectrum; CEOs, doctors, the director general of police, realtors, an attorney, a chartered accountant, a consultant and a sports coach are among those who make his list. Singling out a dominant factor from each person’s story, he outlines the journeys these people undertook and the behaviours they exhibited, and shows how these link up to the results they achieved.

The 65 chapters are aligned into 6 themes:

1.  Strategic and focused on the value creation
2.  Perceptive and derive creative solutions
3.  Driven by business excellence
4.  Deploy professional skills to win
5.  Passionate and lead from the front
6.  Sensitive to people and are customer centric

Though the book is divided into themes, but it doesn’t make any difference even if you read the chapters randomly.

This book is on the management learning mainly from observing people and how they react to real-life situations. Broad areas of management topics are covered - from the global level insights on mergers and acquisitions of the companies to tips on negotiating and real life examples on how to be costumer centric.

Author did a good work by succinctly conveying what he wanted to, in simple language.

There are some informative and inspirational parts that will kick your butt. I particularly liked the topics that focused on negotiating, VC’s, mergers of companies, sales tips and entrepreneurship.

If you have already read a lot of books on management/entrepreneurship then there are only a few chapters that may enlighten you..

But there are take-aways in every chapter to those who are new to this kind of book.

The author, TGC Prasad also wrote a fiction, Along The Way. Rarely we find authors who can deal with both fiction and non-fiction efficiently. Prasad is surely one among them.

Some of the insights from this book:

• Sometimes things don’t go the way we want them to. The best thing to do is to jump in at the right opportunity and make a difference.
• If you want your business to succeed, then you should have a strong desire to make money and really feel bad if you love money.
• Be patient; it’s a long way to the top. Live life as you climb.
• Successful negotiators make the other party feel that they are winning
• Never fear to negotiate and never negotiate in fear.
• People who are employed seek security in their jobs, whereas business people think about generating security.
• Strategy always has to be contextual.
• Happiness is an internal stimulus, irrespective of what happens externally. If you choose to be happy, nobody can stop you.
• Keep your needs basic and life will be peaceful.

Important questions before starting a business : 

• What are you selling ? who is your customer? Why does the customer want to buy your product or service ?
• How long can you sustain yourself and your family without a job ? can you generate business ? do you have any customers right now who are willing to give you assignments?

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.

You can buy this book on Infibeam for 259/- here and for 279/- on Flipkart here

On Writing by Stephen King

'On Writing", a memoir of Stephen King is a must read for every wanna-be story writer. First half of the book is on King's life and the rest is about story writing. His insights on drafting and story developing are priceless. 

These are some of the valuable insights( at least to me)/interesting parts from the book:   

• Your job isn't to find the ideas but to recognize them when they show up.
• When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story.
• Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.
• When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.
• Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right - as right as you can, anyway—it belongs to anyone who wants to read it.
• The door closes the rest of the world out; it also serves to close you in and keep you focused on the job at hand.
• Use the first word that comes to your mind, if it is appropriate and colorful.
• One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you’re maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes.
• The road to hell is paved with adverbs
• All I ask is that you do as well as you can, and remember that, while to write adverbs is human, to write he said or she said is divine.
• If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.
• Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones.
• When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest.
• I suggest a thousand words a day, and because I’m feeling magnanimous, I’ll also suggest that you can take one day a week off, at least to begin with. No more; you’ll lose the urgency and immediacy of your story if you do. With that goal set, resolve to yourself that the door stays closed until that goal is met. Get busy putting those thousand words on paper or on a floppy disk.
• Write what you like, then imbue it with life and make it unique by blending in your own personal  knowledge of life, friendship, relationships, sex, and work. Especially work. People love to read about work. God knows why, but they do.
• In my view, stories and novels consist of three parts: narration, which moves the story from point A to point B and finally to point Z; description, which creates a sensory reality for the reader; and dialogue, which brings characters to life through their speech.
• You may wonder where plot is in all this. The answer—my answer, anyway—is nowhere. I won’t try to convince you that I’ve never plotted any more than I’d try to convince you that I’ve never told a lie, but I do both as infrequently as possible. I distrust plot for two reasons: first, because our lives are largely plotless, even when you add in all our reasonable precautions and careful planning; and second, because I believe plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren’t compatible. It’s best that I be as clear about this as I can—I want you to understand that my basic belief about the making of stories is that they pretty much make themselves. The job of the writer is to give them a place to grow (and to transcribe them, of course). If you can see things this way (or at least try to), we can work together comfortably. If, on the other hand, you decide I’m crazy, that’s fine. You won’t be the first.
• I believed stories are found things, like fossils in the ground, The writer’s job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible. Sometimes the fossil you uncover is small; a seashell. Sometimes it’s enormous, a Tyrannosaurus Rex with all those gigantic ribs and grinning teeth. Either way, short story or thousand-page whopper of a novel, the techniques of excavation remain basically the same.
• Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.
• It’s also important to remember it’s not about the setting, anyway—it’s about the story, and it’s always about the story. It will not behoove me (or you) to wander off into thickets of description just because it would be easy to do. We have other fish (and steak) to fry.
• When it comes to scene-setting and all sorts of description, a meal is as good as a feast.
• In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it “got boring,” the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.
• One of the cardinal rules of good fiction is never tell us a thing if you can show us, instead.
• You can’t please all of the readers all of the time; you can’t please even some of the readers all of the time, but you really ought to try to please at least some of the readers some of the time.
• In the spring of my senior year at Lisbon High—1966, this would’ve been—I got a scribbled comment that changed the way I rewrote my fiction once and forever. Jotted below the machine-generated signature of the editor was this :“Not bad, but PUFFY. You need to revise for length. Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%. Good luck.”
• The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting. Stick to the parts that are, and don’t get carried away with the rest. Long life stories are best received in bars, and only then an hour or so before closing time, and if you are buying.
• I must tell you, though, that confidence during the actual writing of this book was a commodity in remarkably short supply.
• The scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things can only get better.

God Save The Dork - Review

Author: Sidin Vadukut

Publisher: Penguin India

Price: 199/-

My Rating: 4/5

'God Save The Dork' is a sequel to Dork:The Incredible Adventures Of Robin 'Einstein' Varghese

After the voicemail scandal in the first part, Robin ‘Einstein’ Varghese, the protagonist, was promoted in Dufresne. The story of this book was set up in London where Robin was in the Dufresne's team working for their client, Lederman.

This is a hilarious account of how Robin strives to deliver his best in every situation thinking-on-his-feet but ends up doing something stupid. The satires on consultancy field and humour on office culture are continued even in this book like in the previous one.

Robin’s attempts to get the attention of a beautiful chinky intern, difficulties in helping Sugandh (who cannot even prepare his own biodata) to get a job, Raveena Tandon madness, experience with British museums, jealousy on his college mate Rahul Gupta who is now VP of Dufresne, out-of-box thinking to maintain the relation between Dufresne and Lederman, humiliation because of the microphones, his demanding girl friend, office scandal in the end...Oh wait I forgot to mention about ‘Project Mohanlal’ – ROFL...ultimate mallu comedy.

With Sidin's unique style of writing, this book is witty right from the page one. There is also an element of suspense as the story proceeds. The ending is far better than the previous book.

I don’t want this Dork series to end with just three books. Waiting for the next one.

Overall a rib-tickling work, as expected. 

About the Author: Sidin Vadukut is an engineer from NIT Trichy and graduate from IIMA. Currently a columnist and editor with the business newspaper MINT and also a cricket columnist for www.cricinfo.com

You can order your copy on flipkart here for 129/-  and on infibeam for 119/- here

I’m not twenty four...I’ve been nineteen for five years - Review

Author: Sachin Garg

Publisher: Grapevine India

Pages:223 

Price: 100/-

My Rating: 3/5

   The story is about Saumya Kapoor, from Delhi, who is just out of her MBA. She gets an offer from a steel company and in the last minute she comes to know that her posting is in Toranagalu, a small village in Karnataka. She couldn’t imagine her life without shopping malls and short skirts in that village that too with Amit (her college mate whom she hates for various reasons). But as she did not have another option she accepts it and lands in Toranagalu.

   In Toranagalu, she meets Malappa, another new joinee in the plant. He is an interesting guy and Saumya was attracted to him. She gets posted in Safety section of the company where she is required to handle tough jobs. Just when you are about to think that a love story was coming up between Saumya and Malappa, some unexpected incidents in the plant make Saumya’s life more tragic than she imagined.

    At the time when Saumya was in a dilemma whether she could handle the pressure, her relation with Shubhrodeep develops. Saumya met Shubro during her initial days in Toranagalu, in a trip with Amit and Malappa to nearby place. Shubro moves on from place to place for every three months, that is his life style. For three months he stays in Toranagalu in the steel plant with Saumya’s help.

   Saumya likes Shubro but doesn’t reveal it as she fears he may reject her and move on to another place following his move-on theory.

   The rest of story is about how the character Shubro unfolds, Can Saumya handle her job after the disturbing incidents? Did she express her love to Shubro? Will Shubro stay back for Saumya? What is the reason behind his life style?

If you are wondering what happened to Malappa…well, that is another twist in the tale!!   

    The way the book started with the author meeting Saumya in a journey and Saumya telling her story to him reminds me of the CB style. This story will be refreshing for those who got bored with the routine college love stories. The story isn’t predictable...it is gripping till the end. The writing style is good…made this an easy to read. The discussions between Saumya and her friend Varthika are entertaining.

    The thing which attracted me to this book other than the legs on the cover page is that Sachin Garg wrote the story from a girl’s perspective. But unfortunately he is not completely successful in portraying a girl before reader. The emotions of a girl are surely missing.  

   More than Saumya, it is the character Shubro that I liked a lot, author did a good job in developing this character. The way author handled Malappa’s character is a bit disappointing. It would have been better if Malappa has more scope in the story. 

    Overall, a decent work by Sachin. 

About the Author: Sachin is an Engineer from Delhi College of Engineering (DCE) and did his MBA from MDI, Gurgaon. Apart from books, he has a keen interest in strength training activities and travelling. In 2011, he quit his day job to start his own venture in print media.

  

 This review is a part of Book review program at  Blogadda.

A Roller Coaster Ride-When an IITian Met A Bitsian Girl - Review

Author: Saumil Shrivastava

The story starts at IITB where the protagonist Maddy, who is from the same college, meets a girl who came to their cult-fest ‘mood indigo’. That relation ends in tragedy in a couple of days. Next, it is about his encounter with Pooja, whom he met on Orkut. She agrees to be his girlfriend leaving her boyfriend because of Maddy’s IIT brand (that is what she says). Maddy gets a job so he shifts to Gurgoan, where he meets his flat mates - Harsha, Kundan and Dhananjay. The relation with Pooja becomes a distance relation.

    In office he meets Divya, who is a bitsian. Divya becomes Maddy’s best friend. Whenever there is a fight between Maddy and Pooja, Divya sorts it out. As the story proceeds Maddy doubts whether Divya loves him. And he is confused whether he should go after Pooja(with whom he is having problems) leaving Divya( who loves him a lot).. After one incident he realizes Divya is the right one. From there the relation with Divya begins. The rest of the story is about how this relation turns out to be. Will their relation end on a happy note? Or will it be a disaster like his previous experiences? How did the relation of Maddy with his flat mates changes during all this?

    Though this one is quite predictable till the end, the ending justifies the title “roller coaster ride”. I liked the way author portrayed Maddy’s relation with his flat mates.

    As the story advances Maddy inspires to be an entrepreneur. But this point did not show any impact on the story line. There are some characters which come and go without adding anything to the story.

The writing style is fine. This is like real life incidents packed into a single story.

Just-ok type. Not a must read.

Revolution 2020-Review

  Author: Chetan Bhagat

Storyline: Revolution 2020 is a story about 3 childhood friends Gopal, Raghav and Aarti. They have their own ambitions. Aarti wanted to become an air hostess. Raghav gets a rank in IIT-JEE and joins IT BHU. Though he joined in engineering, journalism was his passion and he wanted to bring a change in the country. Gopi’s only wish is to make lots of money. He couldn’t get into IIT in his first attempt. So he joins as a ‘repeater’ in a coaching centre in Kota, spending the entire savings of his father. But fate offers him an opportunity to start his own engineering college, with the support of Shukla, an MLA.  To start the college he follows the corrupt path as he did not have another way. 

    

    After college Raghav joins as a reporter in a newspaper. His profession creates some problem to Gopi. Shukla, the person behind Gopi, stamps Raghav as much as he can with his political power to get him out of his way. Raghav fights back and starts his own newspaper...Revolution 2020!!

     

    Both Raghav and Gopi like Aarti. Aarti likes Raghav and Gopi was her best friend. How did the relation between Raghav and Gopi change due to their common love?? Can Raghav achieve what he wanted to with Revolution 2020?? Did the relation between Aarti and Raghav continue in spite of his unsettled and busy career which leaves very little time for her?? How can Gopi become the director of an engineering college without even a college degree?? How far did Gopi go on his path?? Can Gopi compete with Raghav to get Aarti??

These are some parts I think you should know by reading the book.

Chetan Bhagat did a great work here. To tell in one line about his style in this book… “He first entertains you, grabs your attention and then says what he wants to.”

This is an absolute page turner right from the first page…till the end!!! The ending was really touchy… did not expect it. I didn't even expect that the book focuses on the IIT coaching institutes.

Most of the story took place in Varanasi except for some part in Kota.

This book has many shades. It first showed the chaos that is there through out India in the name of ‘IIT coaching centres’. Then it focused on the corruption in private engineering colleges. Even the pollution problems in Varanasi are raised many times. It ended with a message that “Everyone should sacrifice a bit for the change they want to see.” On the other side it shows how the relation among Gopi, Raghav and changes dramatically as the story precedes.  

The story is said from reference to Gopi and the highlight of the book is how relation between Gopi and Aarti developed. Just like his other books even this one has lots of CB trademark one-liners.

I liked the way CB described Gopi’s feelings when he was a repeater in Kota and his feelings towards Aarti even when she is in relation with someone else.   

I personally loved Revolution 2020.

The Goat,the sofa and Mr.Swami - Review

Author: R Chandrasekar.

“The goat, the sofa and Mr. Swami” is a comical satire on the Indian politics. The protagonist Mr. Swami is an IAS, secretary to the ‘old man’ Keshav Motwani, inefficient PM of India. ‘Old man’ is 82 years old and spends most of the time watching the digitally edited DVD of a girl dancing nude. 

Once Shah, the Pakistani PM, expressed his interest to watch the test match between India and Pakistan, which will take place in India. ‘Old man’ agreed and invited Shah to the match and also promised him to show the DVD he has. There were many issues in the Indian administration right from the day the sudden visit of Shah was announced. The rest of the story is about how Swami dealt with the problems. Some of the problems Swami faced were...

• Many bureaucrats wanted to sit on the sofa along with the Prime Ministers and watch the match.  
• Every state in India wanted to have their presence during this event.     
• Shah wanted to gift a goat to the ‘old man’. This led to uncertainty in accepting it and then on deciding about the goatherds.     

The bet by the prime ministers on the match in the end resulted in many funny incidents.

I liked the characterization of 'old man' who watches edited videos every night, wakes up late, makes Swami read the important news from newspaper. If he did not like any one, he transfers them to Mogadishu, a country in Africa. In case of emergency he joins in the hospital and wants Swami to take care of the situation. The conversations between Swami and old man are very funny.

The character of urine drinking, opposition leader, Tiwari is hilarious.

The entire book is filled with rib tickling incidents though some are far from reality. This is a quick read and the price on Flipkart is ok. I think it is because of the bad marketing that many are unaware of this book.

Overall a good read.

Last Man In Tower - Review

Author: Aravind Adiga.

The protagonist Yogesh A Murthy (known as ‘masterji’) is a retired teacher living in Vishram society of Mumbai. His son lives in another part of Mumbai with his family. Masterji lives alone. He is respected by all the residents of that society. Shah, a real estate guy, thinks that the location of the society is where the future is and wants to redevelop it. So to buy that society, he offers a tempting amount to the residents  and keeps a deadline for them to vacate. After initial resistance by some residents gradually everyone in the society will incline to accept the offer because of their personal reasons except Masterji !!

  

Masterji don't want to leave the society at any cost as he has all his memories there. Shah, who once came to Mumbai penniless, worked hard to get to this position and he don't want an old teacher to come in the way to his dream project. Even after many attempts of negotiation by the builder through his left hand man, Shanmugam, masterji doesn’t turn up. All the residents along with masterji’s son try to convince Masterji to accept the offer. But still Masterji sticks to his word.. “I want nothing. I just want to spend rest of my life in this society”. But the residents feel that the money builder offered is the only solution to their personal problems. So soon they start isolating Masterji. The rest of the story is about how Masterji resists the builder and about how the residents who once used to respect Masterji go against him plotting ways to ‘remove’ the only block from their fortune !!

The author Aravind Adiga is gifted with storytelling skills. The way he develops characters in his books is brilliant, the characters would be so real that they should be given birth certificate. I liked his prize winning book “the white tiger” and the story line here in “last man in tower” is better than that. But this book is very slow, than "the white tiger". I enjoyed his first book more than this. The story picked pace from the middle. As the story precedes the fight between Masterji and Shah soon turns into fight between Masterji and the other residents in the society. The struggle by the Masterji fighting alone against everyone is described well. Though the character of the builder Shah was developed well initially, in the end he did not play big role.

Many parts don’t add anything to the story and the first 200 pages are used mostly to develop the characters in the society, the builder and his assistant. I liked the way he showed in his books about how the needs of the people change them. You cannot say they are good or bad. The circumstances just drive them to do those things.

In “the white tiger” he talked about various conditions in dark side of India but in this he focused on a single society in Mumbai.

I like the author’s style of developing simple characters and show how they would react in different situations.

If you liked Aravind Adiga’s style of writing in “ the white tiger” then you will surely like this one too.

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.