Anything For you Ma'am - Tushar Raheja

Anything But this please..

The last time I was in Landmark, I saw this movie in the latest release list and it had also been received well in The Hindu and so not wanting to buy the book (for no reason but just that I don’t have space at home to store it), I checked with my Lending library, and lucky for me, they had not one but two copies. I promptly brought one home with me and plopped on the bed all set to read it.

The 1st page “before in begin…” was quiet interesting to read, and so I had very high hopes for the rest of the book. And so flipping through the next couple of pages, I finally got to the beginning of what seemed to be a never ending saga of how Tushar plans, plots, schemes, lies to make it to Chennai to meet his sweetheart who unfortunately cant come to Delhi thanks to a wedding in the family. The one thing that the reader neednt worry about is getting lost among all the names dropped here and there, cos the author has made sure to dedicate a couple of paras for each of them, this covers his friends, professors, family, his never ending line of sisters and ofcourse his hostel buddies and fellow IIT’ians.

The way he keeps talking about how the Weather is Great, The Month is great makes us wonder what’s with the superlatives sprinkled all over and another not so great thing about the book is the beyond vivid imagination that tends to go off on a Tangent far too many times and we kinda lose track of the book and the main story that he is trying to complete.

Some of the reasons why you should read this book:

Ø Vivid descriptions of the weather, you will find this almost through the book.

Ø Description of the love-interest of the writer makes one fall in love with her.

Ø Book is cheap; so even if you did buy it, its just Rs100

Some of the “stay away” reasons are:

Ø It’s all about IIT, IIT’ians, Professors, and more IIT’ians.

Ø It’s more like a journal rather than a novel.

Ø As I mentioned earlier, the amount of coincidences is far too many, makes the book seem like its all just been made up, cooked up.

The book is a good time pass read I would say, but it is too long and the amount of coincidences you come across make your head swim and wonder what the hell is the author trying to do to the reader? Baffle them, Surprise them or jus Kill them … another question that popped in my head was, why does the cover of the book say “An IIT’ians love story”? Are IIT’ians supposed to be Demi-Gods or is it just a way to try to increase the sales of the book or trying to lure people into reading it by putting it on the same shelf as the others by Chetan Bhagat?

Anyways, for all those of you who don’t mind reading about “A” guy’s narration of how he wanted to meet the love of his life, please do read this book and for those looking for something more than just a Journal, my request is stay away from this book…

Aaarti © 22/11/06