The dazzling redness of it, and the emblazoned heart, screams out to readers, particularly young ones (at whom it’s insistently targeted), to choose it over other similar books.
And so is the story in a nutshell – that of an 18-year-old IIT aspirant who is obviously more interested in girls and gadgets than his career. [break]He leaves his home to prepare for super-competitive exams and loses his heart as well as his position in the institute before finally life leads him to a different destination. The idea holds promise, and the novel itself has been marketed remarkably well. But unfortunately, that’s not enough to classify it as a noteworthy read.
Good trappings alone don’t make a good reading, and this novel is a prime example of the fact. The grossest part about it is that, it is a complete rip-off of Chetan Bhagat’s novels. It’s easy to see where the author has derived his ‘inspiration’ from. The protagonist of the novel is an IIT aspirant, and he tries very hard to be as cool as the protagonists of the novels from which he is copied, but utterly fails. There’s absolutely no spirit or sentiment visible in him. He’s just a listless dummy forcibly given life by the author, who doesn’t know what to do with the hapless guy midway, and simply lets him languish along, even adding an expulsion and a suicide a la Bhagat’s boys. Towards the end, there’s actually a slightly touching part about following one’s own dreams, but even that turns lackluster and pretty pointless by the time the novel ends.
The rest of the novel is as tepid as its protagonist, who says he’s seventeen but sounds like a particularly lecherous forty-year-old. His actions, words, the company he keeps – all suggest nothing but a boring and annoying vacuum. He’s not even naughty or wicked enough to be attractive, but just plain bothersome. The author vouches for him (or rather he paints himself) as a stud – one who has a pretty girlfriend, can solve all his friends’ problems, and who cares two hoots for his education.
Unfortunately for him, he’s too weak-willed and grating to be even faintly charismatic, leave alone a stud. The characterization is patchy at best, and the dialogues are so clichéd that all the characters seem to be hamming. The events, ranging from a bachelors’ party to visits to a chor bazaar, a wildlife sanctuary and a brothel, are all mildly interesting – but nothing that would encourage readers to turn the pages with excitement.
The better facet of the novel is its setting. In little bits and pieces, from the Darbar eatery to pigs lying around, Kota gradually comes alive in its details.
But the rest of the writing techniques are a mess, for which the greatest fault lies in the author himself. He has absolutely no command of nor grip over the English language. Whatever encouraged him to publish an entire novel with his atrocious grammar is a mystery. On the very first page, there’s mention of ‘a enticing’ beach. This could be disregarded as a typo, but what does one do with sentences like “Many gossips were cooked”, and “Why are you guys look so worried?”
Then there’s Ranjan’s love for using contextually inappropriate and high-sounding words like ‘parlance’, ‘ostensibly’, ‘caveat’ and ‘nadir’ when he can’t even handle ordinary, day-to-day conversations. “Things got really exciting with this serendipity”, the narrator claims at one point, leaving the reader flabbergasted at this juxtaposition. He equates the word ‘beatific’ with ‘beautiful’ and thus we have quite a few beatific characters and events in the novel – which prove to be unintentionally hilarious.
Even amidst this inanity, the author has tried to give some meaning to his work by seriously considering issues like peer pressure, the depressing education system, the bomb blasts in Delhi, online phising, the reckless moral attitude of adolescents, contemporary media aggression, terrorism, and substance abuse. They are handled with sensitivity at times, but the words used to convey their significance are so bland and jaded that the message doesn’t get across. Similarly, beautiful lines like “good lovers are good liars” and “A sun never rises from the fear of darkness” do exist, but very few and far between. In fact, the joker’s jottings at the end of each chapter are funnier than the entire chapters, perhaps because they are succinct, compressed and true to life.
The sexual innuendos and portrayals of intimacies are retch-invoking and revolting in their crudeness. In psychoanalytical terms, it would perhaps be safe to say that Priyesh Ranjan has enjoyed giving vent to his repressed desires in this highly repulsive manner. Frankness needn’t equate lechery just as honesty shouldn’t mean vulgarity. The author needs to learn this first, just as he needs to acknowledge that if the language itself is off-putting, even the strongest plot can’t redeem the novel.
Related story
Curious concerns
