Five Point Someone –Five out of Five!

The journey from boys to men has always been a fascinating subject in the world of literature, having entranced writers and readers alike. Chetan Bhagat treads no new ground as he carves out a similar tale of three teenaged boys in his debut venture, ‘Five Point Someone’.

Indian Institute of Technology – lovingly acronym-ed the I.I.T. has been the first love of many parents, students and industrialists. What might possibly go on inside the hallowed portals of this venerable temple of educationists was, therefore, a theme likely to entrance many – as the mind-numbing success of the book proved.

Having said that, the story is emphatically not a guide as to how to get into the I.I.T.s. It is not a practical handbook to that effect. It is nothing more and nothing less than a simple narration of events – events that reek suspiciously of truth and experience rather than pure flight of imagination. It has nuances of stark humour, of camaraderie and love, of failures and successes – all in all the whole bag of tricks.

Three green-behind-the ear boys meet and an unlikely pal-ship springs between them. They are all too different people – the cool, confident Ryan, the conventional, middle-class Alok and the shy, sentimental narrator Hari. How Alok ends up with broken bones, Hari with a sizzling love affair right under his professors’ noses and how all three of them end up with five points something GPAs at the I.I.T.s is what the story is about.

The under-current of dissatisfaction about the style of education at this ‘world-famous-in-India’ institute, if present, is food for the reader’s thought. The author has a fresh, light style of putting across his thoughts and could well emerge as one of India’s most popular.