Revolution 2020 by Chetan Bhagat ... A Reader's Review

Well, as the title may suggest I am going to write about chetan bhagat's new book Revolution 2020.. The name itself looks quite serious and so is the book.. The fun & the humor quotient that we generally find in Chetan's books, is missing from here. The story can be looked upon in three parts.. (1) Poor guy who wants to get rich.. (2) Guy in love with a girl who thinks they are just friends.. (3) A guy trying to remove corruption from the system..

Well not to mention Chetan has again put IIT pressure on students thing here n he made us realize how low society thinks of the colleges we all studied in.. :)

Throughout his narration the only college that kept on coming in my mind was LPU but I really don't know why. May be because of the way it had expanded in last few years..!! From an Engineering College to University providing all sort of Degrees.

Once again Chetan has used his old masala trick of depicting each movement of love making scenes between main characters.. It's more like Indian film makers trying to add an item song in each of their movie. Whether or not it is required.

The stories were quite old.. They made me think of 90s movies.. In some of the scenes it appeared as if the two male characters are Amitabh Bachhan & Shashi Kapoor of Deewar.. One proud of the money & fame he achieved and the other Can go to any extent to do right thing in life.. As usual the girl was depicted as the most beautiful girl in the town. She has this typical girly character who knew what is the line between being Just Friends & in a relationship. We guys could never figure this out. She was like girls who may say that they love you at one moment and at other moment they may say that they used love word as friends.. These are the most dangerous type of girls as they will not let the guy go away from them but at same time will not allow to come close to them, unless they have no other option..

For most of part the book is depressing and frankly speaking I didn't like it.. I was a Chetan Bhagat fan but he kinda ditched public by involving himself in the fake drama created by him & Others during 3-Idiots release. He tried same thing by making unnecessary remarks on Mr. Narayan Murthy. He should concentrate more on story and books will sell themselves..

My rating for this book is 2 out of 5.

Week full of Movies :)

Last 7-10 days were full of movies and fun. Its been a while since I have felt this much low work pressure but the work I was doing is way to critical, perhaps this is the only thing making me nervous right now. Anyhow I watched Madagascar on my laptop along with my roommate Dhingra and soon after finishing it we headed straight to Select Citywalk, where our Harry Potter's latest flick was waiting for us. Not really actually! we reached there some 15 minutes late and it had already started. But then we had no choice then to watch rest of movie. I dont know why but I have this feeling that Harry Potter series has lost its charm after 3rd part (Chamber of Secrets). May be its only my assumption as I had to watch it only in English from fourth part onwards :). I watched first three parts in Hindi. Well next day I went straight to my cousin Dheeraj's new house to welcome new Bhabhi. There is no better place in Dlehi other then Malls and Movie halls, specially in Summers. The only decent realease we had last week was Luck. From trailors the movie was looking crap but as soon as we entered the hall, somehow we got engaged in the script. The movie seemed good. Although, morally not much of people would have liked the subject but once in, after purchasing those 225+15 Rupees per head who cares about moral issues ;-). The movie was fast and there was no chance that boredum can enter you mind. Most of the people didnt see the movie because of the reviews they got but I like to give reviews rather then listen to reviews thats why I can also watch a movie like Jashnn on a weekeday :) Yes guys I even saw that. Tell me, what can you do when your roomie's girl is in your house at 11 PM!!! Well I didnt want to be KCH (Kabaab che Haddi) and decided to watch something like Jashnn alone. Its not even worth writing review. A total crap!! Rest pf time I was busy doing coding on HP3000 ( I guess its since Aladin's time) machine for Pricelist. My PL would kill me if anyhing went wrong today :( I'll be dead man!!!Well then as decided in Bus I booked tickets for Love Aaj Kal for Friday evening show. Ok I am going to check Pricelist script now catch you soon... Will complete it soon, I know nobody will visit this link till then ;-)
----I am back guys...
My scripts seem fine but god knows how well they will do at 13:00 CET. Fingers Crossed!! All I can say is that I need some LUCK. May be I can borrow some from Sanjay Dutt or Imran Khan :). Coming back to Love Aaj Kal, movie seemed quite strange the way it started. The love thing happened in just a fraction of minutes. It was like 5 Min ladki In!! Sounds wonderful though ;-). Anyways the real movie began when Rishi Kapoor came out of no where. Saif looked really OLD when he first entered. Perhaps in year or two Imtiaz can make a movie with Saif playing Rishi's character and Ranbir making entrance in Saif's character. Well I said Ranbir because Saif looked exactly the same in one of L.A.K. posters!!! Deepika seemed perfect in this role though ;-) The movie was quite good and as expected I got call from Divya as soon as I reached home. Well she went for 7:20 PM show and I was bit faster then her. Mine was at 6:30 PM. Lolz... I won :). The excitement from her voice told me that she had watched the movie and she loved it. This was kind of excitement she showed after watching JTYJN and Rock ON... And yes Divs, Pooja & MS I heard "Ajj Din Chaddeya" and its superb. Also this movie taught me one very important lesson.... I am a "khulla hua Saand" from last 18 Months. Sounds quite heavy :)

Movie Collection Increased :)

Well my chandigarh yatra last week proved quite useful in terma of my collection :)... Thanks Divs... Just watched Butterfly Effect ...mast movie... :)

The Police Thaana Yatra ...

Well it was one of those days when me and Sumit once more in our life decided to go movie together. What can you expect from two Girlfriend-less guys. Friends in need :)
After leaving cinema Sumit realized that his wallet was not with him. We searched and searched hard but no result. In the end we blocked his Debit/Credit cards and decided to register complaint in Police station. Now the tough task began. We watched movie in GIP and hence we were in Noida and the nearest Police station didnt cover GIP as it was not under them. Once again system failed :) . Anyhow we reached sec 37 Police station and we were asked to write application and one of the policeman told us that you can write application in both English or Hindi but they prefer mother toungue. Well there I was waiting for such an oppertunity and below is the application I wrote on behalf of Sumit. It was hard to write in Hindi after so many years but it was fun. No spell check allowed guys ;-)

The songs which became part of my Life...

The list may change on some other day but when I was thinking about the songs I love, following songs just came into my mind...

(1) Tumse hii (Jab we met): It had to be right there at the top of my list. Super romantic!! Love without any expectations. Wonderful lyrics and the music just sends me to dreamland. Although I must say my roommates will kill me if I played it once more in our Car. :)

(2) Addicted (Enrique Iglesias): The lyrics are just superb. Enrique's voice makes it even more better. Annoyed girlfriend/friend-girl? works most of the time... 9 out of 10 times actually ;-)

(3) Aaoge jab tum (Jab we met): Again fantastic lyrics. "Naine tere kajrare hain, naino pe hum dil haarey hain, anjane hi tere naino ne vaade kiye kayi saarey hain" This line is killer. Emotions just flow like anything in this song...

(4) Love to see you cry (Enrique Iglesias): Just super music and Enrique's awesome voice.

(5) Rhythm Divine (Enrique Iglesias): This was the first song of Enrique that I heard and I became a fan. Searched all over in order to get this song into my computer. Before that I used to dial my cable operator everyday in order to see this song. Mast lyrics again and superb music.

(6) Hum jo chalne lagey (Jab we met): Jab we Met again. I am fan of this movie and Music is one of the reason. Super kool music and some how it motivates me, don't know why though.

(7) I'll Survive (Enrique Iglesias): Pure inspiration... I used to listen it all day after my not so good 2nd Sem result and I rocked in 3rd sem :)

(8) Bheegi bheegi si hain raatein (Gangster): Well it just came at right time. Song was new and I was going through tough time then. Somehow It became inseparable part of my Cellfone.

(9) Chak de INDIA (Chak de INDIA): Well what a song... If you are sports lover, this is the song for you. I loved the way India won the worldcup T20 and this was the song playing all over the grounds. It just charges you. And I guess it charged team India too...

(10) Jaleo (Ricky Martin): One of the songs I wanna listen to again and again. Although originally it is in Spanish but the Spanglish version is awesome too. Ricky Martin has always been my favourite but don't know why he is not coming with another smashing album of his!!!

Trip toTAJ

At last one of our many plans was heading towards right direction. There had been many plans in recent past which got clean bowled either by Midoo’s duty calls or Thimboo’s berlin day1. But this time around there were no duty calls and no Berlin.The day started of with calls from Thimboo, Ringoo & Chichoo. Well for a change I was ready before time. I guess it was due to the pure excitement factor. But then I got engaged in resolving an issue which I didn’t tell anybody because I knew this time around they will surely kill me if I even talked about any Duty call. Sorry Parshoo, you had to wait quite long out there near subway!! So finally I reached subway and picked Parshoo and from there we flew to Ringoo’s flat on Rickshaw. Harry was ready and it was good to see him fully prepared with all the balloons and other stuff, which reminded me that it was our little chichoo’s b’day!! Well I felt so stupid because I didn’t even wish her when I talked to her in the morning… But as they say its better being late then never and I had entire day in my hand.
Next task was quite difficult actually. We had to pick JT from her house. Somehow I always feel odd whenever I visit her house. Don’t know why, may be because of first strange Tea Introduction of ours with her parents or me being involved in dropping her to her house late night or me being too shy ;-). For a change the gals came with only 10-15 minutes delay. The first thing I did was to correct my first mistake of the day. I straight away wished MS. The journey finally started. Well, being the senior most guy I had to take the boring front seat and from past trip’s experience I knew it was no fun. So I was actually waiting for some sacrifice from someone. First time I saw bday celebration in an Innova and it was really nice. It was good to see MS getting the magical bag as her b’day gift. I hope you’ll soon get it fully loaded with a rabbit, a mini refrigerator and lots of other stuff. For complete list you know whom you should contact. As expected I was called on back seats but with a difficult challenge thrown at me by JT. How many gals will ask a guy to slap her while going to the TAJ. Well she was pretty confident that I cant do it and I knew it as well. Even the thought of doing it vanished as she looked great with those little apples down her ears.Finally I got my favorite last row seat. It has been my favourite seat since I left my school. I thought I would miss my college mates with whom we sang all those weird songs in our weird voices but it wasn’t to be. Prashant came up with all those different songs and it was fun. Sumedha surprised me actually, she almost knew all of the songs. But then it reminded me that she is a Virgo girl and I have seen the same passion for songs and dance somewhere else too. Ok Ok, I wont go in much details now…
Harry was as usual awesome with his guitar and Prashant showed his skills with Banzo in his hands. It always reminds me of Jai from Sholey. Let me tell you its not always a nice feeling when you know that out of three guys you are the only one without any musical instrument. What the hell I did in my teen age!! The only thing that I had in my hands was Cricket bat (and not guitar) and I never liked the idea of picking something near my mouth unless it is delicious and eatable, so banzo was automatically out of equation. The cab seemed to rock with all kind of songs, whether they were straight from heart from harry or from throat from Sumedha or mine straight from stomach… As usual, MS was not entirely happy with the things. Her “I don’t like” list is as long as JT’s “Crazy things I did” list. The Indian (rather Pakistani) version of summer of 69 (Purani Jeans) and couple of other songs reminded JT of her last college days. I wish my last college days were as good. However the last party we had was the best I have ever seen. Finally we reached Agra and straight away headed towards a restaurant. It seemed good but quality of food was Theek Thaak. As usual MS didn’t like the food.
The best part started with our tonga ride towards The TAJ. My first ride on a tonga. I always wanted to do this since I saw Andaaz Apna Apna (some 14-15 times). Entry to TAJ was fantastic. The five of us headed towards the entry door to get first view of TAJ. Wait…. I guess we were supposed to be six J Well JT was all engaged in capturing beauty of TAJ in her new SX110 Digi Cam. Finally she joined us and we did what most of other people were doing, we took snap in front of the TAJ. We headed towards TAJ and got to know that entrance can only be made bare feet. Well there we were bare feet waiting for Jyotsna madame and Harry sir to arrive. Heat of the moment just climbed from feet to my head and I had some not so nice words to say to JT. Although I must confess that I felt really bad on loosing my calm. It doesn’t happen normally but I guess I always lacked patience. I heard in AIRTEL Broadband’s ad that Impatience is the new Mantra but it wasn’t to be on that day. The photo session inside the TAJ was quite interesting. We came with all the weird possible posses… Well right now I am watching Spiderman on Max in Hindi and it reminded me of the famous incident inside the TAJ. By now Prashant must have learnt that everything associated with Jyotsna becomes an incident and now he is part of that incident book. Jyotsna demanded something like a flower, which was quite high, from me and which I reluctantly declined but Parshoo tried to make Spiderman part 4 and went straight into the hole. The poor chap was lucky enough that he didn’t face any major injuries.Finally we bid adieu to Taj and we were on our way towards Delhi. I could clearly see that JT was not at her very best and I guess I knew the reason was me. Well the one thing that keeps smiles on everybody’s faces is Jyotsna at her craziest best and it feels really bad when you know that you are the reason behind some of those lost smiles. I heard somewhere that it’s the effort that’s matter. And with strong determination and with MS and Sumedha on my side I began the Mission “JT Manaao” which was interrupted from time to time by Harry J. Well as most of the time it happens he was unaware of the things going around him. I always knew that JT was different but I never imagined that she could be so different. Even Enrique’s addicted was not able to impress her.The points over my head were gradually decreasing from zero to infinite negative. And they reached the maximum possible negative value when unknowingly I hit Sumedha with the guitar and stepped over JT’s TAJ… L. Unlike Sumedha, MS stood by me throughout And atlast we found something that MS likes… But the thing MS enjoyed the most proved a full headache for JT. Well It took me 3 days and one night full of harsh words from JT to come back to normal. But I guess it was worth. Overall the whole trip was quite enjoyable and I am blessed to have added such friends in my life. As they say all good things have to end and the day ended with a bit of disappointment. But overall it was enjoyable and a trip to remember…

The Ability to Bounce back...

Final year of my college, Placement activities were going on and we got to know that we would be going to Lovely Institute in Jalandhar for Hewitt. Nobody knew anything about Hewitt, the only thing that was in mind was that it is an MNC. Hopes got thrashed a bit when we got to know that they have openings for Testing profiles only. But we went for it because most of us had no offer in Hand. As usual I along with most of classmates cleared the first few rounds. And then came the interview part. I answered most of technical questions and was sitting pretty confident out there. Suddenly the Interviewer asked me to tell him one of my strengths which makes me different from some of other candidates. Well I was surprised by this question because I came in interview with techie mindset. But after thinking for few seconds, I told him that its my ability to bounce back from difficult situations!!! I don't know from where this thing came in my mind but somewhere down the line I think I have this quality. Right from childhood I have kept the fighting spirit alive in me. There was time when I slipped to second position in my class by just 3 marks but next year I came back with a very strong mindset and the difference was of 30-40 marks. But the only difference was I was at top. I felt the same thing when we used to play cricket. I still remember the day when I was hit for SIX on last ball of innings and our team lost the match!!! I was in class 7Th then and our captain didn't gave me ball for next 6-7 matches. Even though, I was the only bowler with proper bowling action apart from him. The things became even more horrible when they started using coin to decide who amongst me n my friend (both in same school/class) will play the match, because we always used to be with one extra player. But then one day luckily I won the toss and I was playing for pride (and of course rupee five bet). That match had quota limit of 4 overs for a single bowler. Some calculations went wrong and in the end the only bowler who had one over spare had just bowled the very last over. So he was out of equation. The only choice left was me. Equation was 1 over and 6 runs needed and 3 wickets in hand. I got hit for six last time when I tried bowling medium pace, so I decided to bowl leg spin. First two balls produced 2 run outs. Equation became 6 of 4 balls required. But then a slog sweep from batsman earned him a boundary and I saw the captain abusing me from boundary. It somehow just charged me with anger and there I was telling the umpire "Right hand Over, medium fast". The ball landed at yorker length and top of Off stump was kissing the ground. This Win changed everything for me. From extra to regular member to opening bowler to all rounder and in the End Captain of my Street level team :). This has been story of my life. Life has been a Sine Curve with so many UPs and DOWNs. But thats how I like it to be.

Somehow I felt today that I have lost this ability. I have become very cool n calm, which perhaps is a good thing but at times you need to change the gears. And I think this is the time to implement thing at professional level!!! Will update with the results soon....