Anything for you Ma'am

Author: Tushar Raheja

When my friend gifted this book to me two months ago, I thought I got hold of a book that was everywhere around me. Most of the book shops had this on their Indian writing section, and all the pavement book sellers had a pirated copy, a girl in red salwar on a sky blue background asking every passer by to pick it up. Just a bit of curiosity about a book on the IIT phenomena, IITian turned author genre.

I didn't exactly love this book, but this could have been a script for a bollywood romantic comedy genre than a novel. There are too many coincidences, and though I agree that coincidences does happen in real life , the way in which those coincidences crop up every now and then makes it a bit unreal. Especially the part where three IITians meeting up in train and they get adjacent seats in the same compartment. This could happen in real life, and such things has happened for everyone, but for me the way it was treated felt a bit made up. Fiction is not about making up a story from incidents, is n't it is more about making the reader relate and accept the fiction as a possible reality.

For me, being from south of India, it is hard to differentiate a Sardarji from another, unless they are absurdly different both horizontally and vertically. A Sardarji too might be confused when faced with a similar looking South Indians. Whatever be it, it is hard to digest that a policemen can take a random Sardarji for a dacoit, and a bald dacoit in that. Just to create tension ?

The tone of the book, the patronizing tone with a lot of inspiration from P.G Wodehouse and early writers may not go down well with everyone. Some of the dialogues are extremely dull, and pathetically artificial. I might be too harsh on the book, but this book is definitely not for someone who has already read a lot books , for they may feel a bit let down.

The bottom line is that though the book makes a valiant effort in portraying the predicaments of a young romantic, it falls desperately short of realism by a long way. A dull train journey.

A place called Here

Author: Cecilia Ahern

I enjoyed my journey through Cecilia Ahern's A place called Here. It is hard to imagine how someone can conceive such a simple thought and yet carry it on for a length of a novel. It is a story that would make you yearn to visit a beautiful place like Ireland. A typical Ahern story where you'll like the protagonist, and wish you could see that person in flesh and bones.

Let me ask you three questions before you plan to disregard this review.You might as well be tempted to search for a copy after reading this.

Have you ever misplaced an important thing?
Have you searched frantically for a seemingly unimportant object?
Have you ever wondered where all those misplaced things in the world go?

If you have at least one positive response for one of the three questions, this book is for you.Cecilia will take you to that place, a place called "Here" where all the misplaced things go. Cecilia Ahern is quite famous for her best seller "P.S.I Love you", but I'd say she was better than that in this book. I don't want to type out the entire story here. Only a few instances where the author was exceptionally brilliant.

Sandy Shortt is more than six feet tall and she has coal black hair. How is that for a lead character ? Unlike the romantic stories, there is no hero to rescue her from her troubled situations, and she often manages to get into trouble. She is obsessed with something that ordinary mortals rarely give a second thought to, searching , searching for every misplaced sock.The book is about searching, not in a philosophical way like a Paulo Coelho book, but a humorous way where the fate of your misplaced object is one step ahead of your bright thought.

If you've started searching for this book, I believe I would 've done one good deed for the day. I hope you won't misplace it when you manage to find one. :)