May 09, 2006 04:26 PM
2032 Views
(Updated May 09, 2006 05:41 PM)
There are bad books, there are good books and there are amazing books.
Then one day, you end up reading something that seem to have been taken out of your life and you start looking for the author for royalty.
ON@CC will fall into the last category for most of the indian youth. I wouldn't go into the details of the storyline as I am pretty sure you would have read about it and in-fact, the less you know about the storyline, the more you will enjoy it.
I bought this book on a weekend and considering my reading speed (which is horrible by the way) I was hoping to finish it over the next two days. The mistake that I did was that I started this book at 12:00 at night and I moved from my place only at 4:00 in the morning after finishing the book.
In simple words, this book is really addictive so don't start it in a middle of a week :)
The writer has narrated this story from the point of a 26 years old Call Centre Executive (Shyam) who hates his job, hates his highly incapable manager who and thinks he is a total loser because of the constant de-motivating from his superiors. The only reason he is sticking to his job is that it pays good money and working in some other profession will require several times the hard-work as he is currently doing.
The other characters of this novel are his associates at work
Varun Malhotra - An ex journalist-trainee who would loved journalism but is here to make money.
Esha Singh - A wannabe model living away from her parents and working here till she gets a good modeling assignment
Priyanka - Wants to become a school principle and is saving money for her B.Ed
Radhika - A housewife slogging between her traditional in-laws and here demanding night shift just to make some extra income for living
Military Uncle - A retired army man living alone with a meagre pension and hence working for survival.
This is all that I will say about the book except that once you start reading it, you will be able to associate yourself with one character or the other.
Positives of the book
The best thing about this book is the language. It is well narrated with simple language and a little bit of masala also. You will be quite at ease reading this book even if you have never prepared for a GRE.
Price - Well, at 95 MRP and a discount available at many places, this book is a stealer. Surely worth a lot more than spending money on watching a movie which is more of a miss than a hit these days.
Negatives
As you know that all good things have to come to an end and usually the better the whole experience is, the disappointing is the ending. This book also suffers a similar fate as the ending is too much movie like. Maybe the writer did had it at the back of his mind that a movie could possibly be made out of this book and he had tried to end it in the same way by pepping up the ending.
Still this book is a very good representation of the quarter-life crisis that the Indian youth is currently undergoing and will do make you think what you want to do with your life.
