He's done it before. And he's done it again! This writer sure knows how to weave an interesting and unique story and then add MORE peculiar twists to it. His That Kiss In The Rain and A Thing Beyond Forever have stayed my favorite till today and this one didn't disappoint me either.
However, some things I'd like to say about this book:
The writing could be a tad bit better considering he's already penned A Thing Beyond Forever where in my opinion, his writing was marvelous and eloquent. This one seemed amateur at a few bits here and there. Also, his habit of throwing in company names left and right, gave it an impression of a movie with blatant product placement.
Other than that Neel saying that he slept with Nivrita only for his book(which later Neel keeps repeating to make us believe it) was also not true. He slept with her out of lust. It's as simple and clear as that. Whatever. Denial, I get it. As the story progresses, Nivrita is shown to be annoying Neel and he doesn't want to have to do anything to do with her. But later on in the end he jumps for her because of some obligation(?) or for correcting his wrong(?) and the story ends with her telling him "Just say you love me" or something like that. How can he love Nivrita now?? I mean he's a different person now and she's a different person now. He lusts for her,sure, and one can't blame him for it. But he's also not in love with her like before anymore. He has only heard his story and even if he believes it, he cannot love someone just because. That didn't make much sense to me. If only Mr. Novoneel had shown Nivrita and Neel getting closer as the story unfolds would it make sense.
But whatever, I actually liked this book and am glad to have read it. I'd like to end this review with a paragraph from the book which I'd say was a gem for me and This paragraph summed up our generation so well. And it almost made up for his not-that-awesome writing.
"My generation went to school but we were not merely school students. There was nothing innocent about us. And we definitely weren’t ignorant about anything. It was all there right in front of us: from the latest development in the cosmos to the latest adult MMS. With such information available to us 24X7, how could anyone be innocent? It was like how certain fruit sellers force-ripen the fruits and make them ready for selling. My generation was getting forced-ripened just like that. Growth-wise, our mind was ahead of our body. Hence our inner self was naturally a breeding ground for a lot of shit because everyone, including me, was a school going adult. At sixteen we behaved like twenty five, we said slangs with ease, we were casual and experimental with our sexuality, we searched for love because our hormones wanted us to and not because our heart felt the need to, we were selfish, we had no clue what our culture was all about, what freedom was for our previous generations, seemed like a cage for us because we wanted to leap ahead where our predecessors had stopped out of fear and shame. We didn’t complain about each other to parents anymore, rather we showed middle fingers and bitched it out, we were ready to fight, we liked noise, we loved chaos, we kissed and smooched at the drop of a hat because the American television series told us that’s the ‘cool’ thing to do. We watched porn more than we prayed. We were a group of attention-seekers and emotion-haters. So yes, our generation had come a long way from Yo-didun’ s. And the gap was so much that our elders, our education system, or our own morals no longer could teach us a better way to grow up into mature adults. And whenever they tried to change us, we had our middle fingers ready for them too. We were a fuck-all generation."
Keep them good stories coming Mr Chakraborty!!