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HYPERLINK "" Wasteland By Jeff Plunkett Graduates from India's prestigious technology universities get good jobs, make great money and are eagerly sought-after marriage partners. But according to Chetan Bhagat's charming debut novel?Five Point Someone: What Not to Do at IIT, they end up in a Faustian bargain: students at the seven India Institutes of Technology sacrifice their youth for the sake of a successful adulthood.Five Point Someone?tells the story of three IIT students who refuse to make that trade-off, choosing instead to study less and play more. Hari, Alok and Ryan sleep, stumble and cheat their way through Manufacturing Processes and Applied Mechanics to leave room for bigger priorities: vodka, weed and Pink Floyd. Throw in a love affair with a professor's daughter, and you've got every Indian teen's dream. "It's amazing how happy one can be," realizes narrator Hari, "with low expectations of one's self."Parental pressure, familial obligations, gender roles, dating, sex, drugs, suicide; just about every teen issue is addressed, and the book has struck a chord in India. Chat rooms are buzzing, and sales have topped 15,000 in just six weeks (making the book a best seller in India's small English-language fiction market). A Bombay-based production company bought the film rights in June.Bhagat's irreverence stops short of tearing down the ivory tower: all three of his main characters manage to graduate, and all seem poised to follow in the successful footsteps of the author himself, who graduated from New Delhi's IIT in 1995 and now works in Hong Kong for an investment bank. Bhagat was the mastermind of a website promoting the book, offering a monthly contest and his own e-mail address for fan letters. In that sense, even a critical alum like Bhagat makes IIT proud. may well have scraped through IIT as a five-plus pointer. But he scores a perfect 10 with this book — a hilarious, rollicking account replete with witticisms and unforgettable one-liners.The book, as the blurb says, is not to help people who aspire to get into the IIT, or even help those who are already there to pass out successfully. Far from it. It is about this guy, Hari, and his two friends, who consider themselves the underdogs because they have five-point something GPAs (Grade Point Averages), and their (mis)adventures in the four years they spend at IIT. It is about their constant struggle to beat a system which judges everyone by their GPA, and which, they feel, suppresses the creativity of a person. So they set out to make the most of extra-curricular college life, by devising schemes which will help them maintain their five-point something averages with just two or three hours of study a day. The resulting free time is spent in boyish adventures, be it playing squash, roaming the city or trying to woo the professor’s daughter. In short, all that they should not do at IIT. But the one thought nagging them all is, will they make it?The book, besides having a humorous appeal, also deals with the fears and insecurities of the students in one of the country’s top institutions. Its description of the lives of students in IIT or other higher-education institutions such as IIM or NID, rings true. It could be Harvard, except for the desi flavour of the locales. IIT provides the backdrop against which the story unfolds, but it could just as well have been any other elite institution — elite in terms of the aspirations of its students but eclectic in terms of their social, cultural and economic backgrounds.The author delves into the minds of the students, their motivations and aspirations in the competitive atmosphere of IIT. The personal lives of the characters are also beautifully interwoven into the narrative. The protagonist’s involvement with his professor’s daughter forms the love angle of the plot, and their love life accounts for more than a few laughs. The fact that her father is the kind of person no under-performer wants to meet, only adds to the drama. Sentimentality is kept low-key, but not underplayed while portraying the warmth of friendship or bonds of attachment.The book dispels the commonly held notion that IITians generally ‘have it made’. The reader gets to know that life at IIT is totally performance-oriented, with never ending notes, assignments, lectures, etc. It is also a subtle take on the GPA system, which kills the students’ originality. But, in the end, the characters realise that it is precisely this drudgery that makes the IITians what they are.The narrative is interspersed with wonderfully funny incidents, like when Hari sneaks into the professor’s house in the middle of the night to wish his daughter a happy birthday, or when he appears for a viva after downing half a bottle of vodka to "boost his confidence". The language used is original, and the dialogue fresh and youthful. The casual, easy-flowing style makes for easy reading. This is 270 pages of pure fun, and a steal at Rs 95. Carry on, Bhagat. You are doing pretty well for a five-point ‘somethinger’. There’s (been) life after IIT. So, tell us more, even while we wait for Bollywood to light up the screens with your script.'s campus capers are a hit By PARUL GUPTA, ?|?May 24, 2004, 05.51 PM ISTNow that his book on IITians is in the bestselling list, first-time author Chetan Bhagat is hoping for a film offer.?Five Point Someone - What not to do at IIT!?hit the stores last week, and is already in its second print; the first print of 5,000 copies being a sell-out. In Delhi, the book is among the top five at certain bookstores.?A breezy read, Bhagat's first novel takes you through the lives of three low-graders (scoring around five; hence the title) at the haloed institute. Contrary to its tagline, it isn't really a surmise on what to do at India's top tech school.?In fact, IIT provides a good setting for the alumnus; its protagonists could have been at any campus. That is the book's high point; the universal appeal of its characters will strike a chord with most, at the same time giving you a wonderful insight into goings-on at the much-revered school.?Bhagat's Hari, Alok and Ryan are a far cry from the nerd that an IIT graduate is widely perceived to be. Here are three young men, who instead of wearing the IIT stamp on their sleeve, feel immensely bogged down by the burden of being there, which translates into studying endlessly and wanting to have fun hopelessly.?And it isn't just their failing at academics that brings on the misery.?Hari's excess 20-kg is inversely proportional to his GPA; Alok is burdened as much by books as by overwhelming expectant parents and Ryan's angst against a boarding school childhood shows up in his hatred of the system, much like that of J D Salinger's Holden Caulfield.? story by a male writer is always a welcome addition on the bookshelves of the world. And when the writer is an investment banker of Indian origin for an American bank in Hong Kong who wants to create art not just buy it, you got to bring out the red carpet. Undermining a stereotype is always a good thing and Chetan Bhagat's first novel does just that. Bridging the gap between "academic overachievers" and ordinary mortals, it is a story about three friends. Hari, Alok and Ryan, though obviously bright to have got into IIT, are just "five-point someones" trying to keep afloat in an institution where the average grade is 6.5 on a 10-point scale.Hari, the narrator, is stuck between his two best friends in every way. Ryan is the bright, creative, rich and good-looking student whose wealthy parents give him lots of nice things but not enough love. He has nothing to lose and is continuously hatching plots to undermine the evil system of grading that "kills the best fun years of your life", not to mention creativity and originality. Which he has in plenty. "Fatso" Alok is poor, with a paralysed father, a sister to marry off and a mother who slogs at a badly paid job while continuously wiping away her tears with the edge of her sari. Though he once wanted to be an artist, Alok is now motivated by one thing-get the grades in the hope of a "US scholarship", a good job, and the release from his family's unremitting financial duress.Needless to say, Alok and Ryan fall out and Hari is caught in the middle. A mirror to all that is wrong and especially to a work ethic that leaves one with little time for oneself and one's friendships, the novel is littered with all the fun stuff that "muggus" like Venkat forego-vodka, marijuana, sports, ragging, pranks, porn, raging hormones, cinema, love. Namely, Real Life."Girls are beautiful, let's face it ... life is quite, quite useless without them," says Hari. Neha, his paramour, is the toe-ring wearing, ice-cream slurping, pretty, artsy, faintly neurotic daughter of the terrifying Professor Cherian. Torn, as many are, about being a good girl who wants to do bad things, Neha's character is a sensitive portrayal of what it is like to be young and female in an overprotective, patriarchal world. Of course, just when Hari gains her trust (i.e. loses his virginity), he ends up losing her and on the wrong side of her father and the law thanks to one of Ryan's schemes. A threat of expulsion and a suicide attempt bring the book to a boil. Too much judgement, censure and expectation lead to acts of desperation, suggests the narrative: "gpas make a good student, not a good person."Although the writing can be quite jarring and clumsy-this, however, could be intentional in an effort to create a narrative of authentic colloquial speech-it is a well-constructed book with great characters and a captivating plot. Definitely on the right side of five-point something on a 10-point scale. ................
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