Three mistakes of my life - Book Review

Chetan Bhagat's books are like whey protein - easy to digest and high in entertaining nutrition.I read "Five Point Someone" as a friend recommended it to me, with strict instructions to complete it in five hours. This one is a similarly interesting five hour read. Re reads though are sufficient to qualify you as dumb or being on bench.

Having been a lifelong resident of Gujarat's apologetic substitute for a capital Gandhinagar, Ahmedabad was the place where I spent the best days of my youth. The earthquake, the subsequent riots, cricket-our national obsession, religion, undercurrents of Hindu nationalism politics are all mentioned with a red hot love story stuffed in and hence the book based in Amdavad's pols not only relates to our lives but also makes for an amazing masala movie type read. The author oscillates between class and crass, but the former does out do the latter eventually. The characters aren't as well formed as they were in the first novel. Also they are always shown munching on Khakhras, making it seem to be Amdavadis' favourite food and inadvertantly hurting the sentiments of the gastronomic pleasure obsessed Amdavad denizens. time and again Amdavad is spelled as Amdavab, making me wonder if i bought the original copy or a pirated one.

Spelling mistakes and khakhras apart the author has touched the core when he writes about the riots. As Ali's father, the zoology professor learnt from the chimps fighting for everything and eventually kissing to make up every time. " Life will have many setbacks. People close to you will hurt you. But you don't break it off. You dont hurt them more. You try to heal it." The message will do well not just for Amdavad, or five crore Gujaratis but for our country and the world.

It seems that Indian publishers have finally realised the importance of low prices to keep the book on top of the best sellers list and avoid piracy - probably after the innate businessman Kishore Biyani priced his book as low as 100 bucks and sold better than Harry Potter week after week. So for this book, the die hard Gujju's verdict is : For a cool 95 bucks, its a steal.