Five Point Someone

It takes a mild headache and a half drunk cup of coffee mug on my desktop to set the right mood to write a review of this book. Since this is the only book I have read describing "How one becomes an Engineer" stuff, I decided to kill sleep last night reading the book so that I can portray the dard of an Engineer well ("night-outs" as we used to call them in college times ). Its like Shah Rukh Khan getting actually drunk for a scene in Devdas to get the right effect. The story is something an engineering graduate can well connect to and is a rare piece of literature, if any at all, describing the four long years of training the poor souls undergo.

Precisely, the book is about three young 18 year olds who after rigorous hard work for two years made it to the most coveted institute in the country. The prestigious college though turns out quite against their imagination and soon they begin to realize their chances of survival in the competitive IIT environment are quite dim. The book starts with day one at the campus and ends exactly on the day they graduated. Enough background is provided to understand jargon, if used, but it still takes one to be an engineer to giggle at stupid idiosyncrasies or cash the essence of celebrating in misery of failing grades . The story begins with Mechanical Engineering freshers Hari Kumar, Alok Gupta and Ryan Oberoi landing up in adjacent room in Kumaon hostel when a ragging incident brings them together.A skirmish with seniors with Ryan taking the role of savior ensures that three remain best friends for the rest of their IIT days.Hari, the first person, narrates the story in rather pretty impartial manner before Ryan's and Alok's opinions on Hari start wrestling with your critical skills. Hari is fat, unassuming, shy, forever-follower types who if had not made it to IIT would have been this guy next door. A wannabe-Ryan, he just adds an affirmative to whatever his icon says and isn't exactly the guy who would take a unique initiative in his life. Ryan on the contrary would be a bold and flamboyant guy, sketching out new plans for the group to defeat the existing systems and crazy enough to design a radio in midst of a practical examination. Alok on the other hand would be the most studious guy and conservative types when Ryan would be trying to do revolution in IIT and Hari would be trying to be Ryan. Alok was perhaps one reason why the three guys ever opened their text books. Life wasn't exactly uneventful for the three in IIT. Once the seniors had done their part it was the time the proffs start showing their colors. Assignments, projects and surprise tests tormented the three little turtles to an extent that they never recovered from the falling grades ever in their IIT years. They usually got a grade of 5 over a scale of 10. Hence the name Five point someone.

The four year long graduation story goes through a lot of troughs and crests. Their falling grades, Hari's romance with Neha who incidentally happens to be daughter of the Head of Mechanical Department, friction between Alok and Ryan which eventually was mended, the trio's tryst with grass and vodka, Ryan's lube project and their final misadventure that almost landed them up ending their careers. The author describes what could be probably the longest four years in the life of an IITian.

The narration is at its best.The IIT-effect has been well portrayed. Nobody is perfect here. Characters are simply shades of grey.The engineer's penchant in Ryan for experimenting things keeps the reader stuck with a possible revolution-cum-disaster to happen. The anecdotes are interesting and pace is fast. Vocabulary is easy and size of the novel is 270 pages which makes it perfectly right for a beginner, content nevertheless would win an A from the Censor board of India.

The coffee in my mug is over and so are my graduation days. I am not of nostalgic types, neither do I entertain the idea of "those-days-will-never-come-back" and those tear shedding exercises that follow it. But yeah, the book does remind you of your formative years, a restless lifestyle, being with friends all the time and more heartening is the discovery of how being always broke and sleeping without pillow covers could still become the most memorable days of life...