A Roller Coaster Ride by Saumil Shrivastava
After a long silence (on my blog), I’m planning to take you all on an adventurous trip with this post i.e. a review of the novel which I enjoyed a lot while reading and which truly deserves the title of the story “A Roller Coaster Ride”, as I’m still feeling dizzy while starting with this article although it was just few hours back that I finished reading that book.
The protagonist, Maddy is a final year B.Tech student from none other than IIT Bombay, one of the most famous, sought after & prestigious institutes of technology in India. Maddy is quite different from his batch mates and seniors as he prefers chatting online with strange girls whom he comes across through Orkut and Yahoo chat and stays away from boozing & hanging out with friends. He begins his story memorizing an impressing and funny incident which happened in the period of Mood Indigo, the IIT Bombay Cultural Festival and the most awaited event of all the guys in IIT of his final year.
Getting placed in one of the best companies, is a tension for any final year student in India and IITians are no different. Despite of being an eight pointer, Maddy wasn’t able to make it to a reputed company which offered a hefty package. It wasn’t that he didn’t work hard or did not prepare well for interviews, but it was all hard luck. As the writer says, “every dog has his day..” finally Maddy got placed as a business analyst in another reputed company. Later on, he confesses his love to Pooja, a girl whom he met on orkut and was dating recently and makes her his first ever girlfriend.
Pooja is an ordinary girl, who is loving and caring. It shows that she was much more attracted to Maddy because of his IIT tag which gives her future, a financial assurance. Everything flows smoothly until Maddy has to settle in Gurgaon for his job and the two lovers are forced to part & live through a long distance relationship. Maddy gets settled in a flat near to his office with four other roommates, Satya, Harsh, Dhananjaya and Kundan. All three except Satya were from IIT Bombay and were placed in the same company. Unlike his roommates and other colleagues, Maddy is determined to work hard and be successful in his career. He is enthusiastic about his work and is ready to give his best for his first ever project. In the office he meets Divya, a south Indian girl who is quite overweight and average looking. She is a very chirpy and bubbly kind of a girl who attracts the attention of the office crowd and happens to be Maddy’s buddy for the first one month and also the project leader. From their very first meeting Maddy is quite impressed about her smartness and admires her. Office work separates Maddy from his flat mates, which makes them upset and portrays his unfriendly behavior. As he keeps on putting all his efforts in to the office project,his girlfriend Pooja feels abandoned, neglected and deeply hurt. Even Maddy gets irritated with her behavior which leads into much complications in their long distance affair, whereas Divya proves to be his best friend with her loving, caring and encouraging nature. But the story loses its smoothly flow suddenly, few twists happen which rock Maddy’s love life, friendship & office life and the readers are thrown into a roller coaster ride thereafter.
The story is quite detailed and narrates the various incidents of Maddy’s life in a crisp manner. I really appreciate the description of his interviews and the office life after orientation. Never have I come across such detailed description about office life and I feel this would help lot of teenagers to know how office life is, which is quite different from the college life, which is carefree and full of fun. When project plans, staff meetings, client feedback are just a few out of many things to stress yourself, frequent coffee hours can be relaxing and fun with your colleagues. Throughout the story, friendship and its importance have been highlighted. The behavior and the strong bond created amongst guys when they happen to be roommates is quite vibrant. I would take the opportunity to quote a statement from the book which depicts a wonderful truth of the life.
“There is no soul around who is not going through one or other problem but it all depends on how we take it. Either we can keep cribbing about it or we can focus on doing right thing at the right time. It’s all about how we perceive things.”
“The Charm Lies in Living Life”
Although I loved the story, I was little disappointed with the writing style of the author at certain junctures. The first few chapters were well composed and so were the last ones, but in the middle part of the story, the writing pattern has lost its charm. I felt more like reading a drama script than a novel as it was almost full of dialogues and that too not properly specified who was speaking them. As only half of the dialogues were in inverted commas, it confused me, whether rest of the lines are dialogues or just compact descriptions of the situations. Few very important incidents were lacking necessary description of the emotions & behavior of the characters and were rather covered up with tasteless dialogues which bored me and often urged me to stop reading midway. May be there ware so many details to cage up in limited number of pages that writer preferred to go with the conversations. But according to me, if most of the common dialogues were shortened to descriptions and spiced up with emotions, feelings and the surroundings, then those chapters would have been much more interesting.
But overall I would call this as a good story and rate it 4 out of 5. Especially the last few chapters were quite gripping with their twists & turns which will keep the reader glued with a bout of excitement and curiosity. The way this book ends is quite unpredictable and shocking and while reading, I didn’t even have a faint idea about such a climax. A nice book for one & all and I assure you that it will be a breathless roller coaster ride for everyone, so beware and tighten your seat belts!
Ending this post with a nice line I came across while reading the book that has been borrowed from the famous movie Shawshank Redemption.
“Get busy living or get busy dying!”
