The Three Mistakes of My Life: Another review, a bit different

I had decided not to buy the book. I had read quite a few reviews on the net and more importantly, the maturity I was hoping to see with his successive writings was missing in the excerpts. Assuming that the excerpts of a book are some of its best texts, I was disappointed. I was disppointed even with the first few pages. The starting pages, where Chetan receives an email from an Ahmedabad based businessman - who is quite dramatically popping a sleeping pill after writing each sentence - seemed to me more as a bait to create artificial interest rather than a genuine start to a good story.

However, I almost bought the book (you can't avoid looking at the book at a Crossword store given the sheer volume of the stacks and how it occupies every conceivable corner in the store, sometimes balanced like a house of cards and sometimes like a DNA spiral. Sometimes like the now-stabilized Tower of Pisa and sometimes like Shanghai financial buildings. Wherever you look, the yellow-black book unmistakably stares at you). But as fate would have it, one of the trainees reporting to me got so happy with my paternal mentoring that he decided to gift me this title. So he innocently asked me one day whether I have read the book and I just said "No" (I didn't say "I don't plan to either"). The next day, he was there with this book, neatly wrapped in Crossword gift-wrap paper. I had to read it. It's someone's gift and the feelings of someone ought to be respected.

You can get an idea of the story in many of the reviews splattered across the internet (I plan to do different things) - it's about three poor small town ("Small Town" Ahmedabad, one of India's biggest cities) friends (okay, one was probably not so poor) who won't stop talking the hippiest language ever invented, the language even college going students in some Mumbai suburbs hardly speak (at least in my experience, I have not found many in those places talking like that), who start a business of a sports store that was destined to doom because of the unfortunate turn of events in Gujarat and the "Mistakes" of the protagonist. Don't bother if the "Mistakes" aren't really mistakes. They are made to look like mistakes because they needed to lend their support to the catchy title "The Three Mistakes of My Life".

So what are the "Real" mistakes in "The Three Mistakes of My Life"? Here they are:
- A bit of complacency on Chetan's part that anything he writes sells. I am okay with his language; that's his style. But what an author needs is more thought going into his/her work. That was missing. Why do I say that? There is a three page description of something terribly unlikely happening atop a terrace. But there is absolutely no description when these three "small town" friends landed up for the first time in the dazzling "Australia" (and How?). No description of their feelings, the place, the "wow" factor they must have felt. Nothing.

- Unaccustomed Earth (borrowed from Jhumpa Lahiri's title) and No research. What it means it, when you write about environs that surround you, you may need little or no research. But when you write an entire book about some place you might have only visited once or probably seen through the car window, you need to do a bit of homework. Chetan with his limited bandwidth of time couldn't have known much about how people live in the old town of Ahmedabad. Sadly, that clearly shows.

- Misfit between storyline and the lines of thought of the author. The story is serious. It's about the hopes and aspirations of young people. Of loss. Desperation. It's the feeling of getting caged when you really wanted to fly. Chetan, in all likelihood, may not have felt a lot of these feelings in his life. It's fine if you haven't felt. But somehow, you need to assimilate that longing even though its vicarious, probably by observing the real-life counterparts of the protagonists from close quarters. Chetan can pretty well write about the longings and desperations of IIM grads, or IIM wannabes even though he may not have felt those feelings himself. Because that is his familiar territory. Actually this book is a misfit in my expected Trilogy - "IIT - Call Centre - IIM". When you don't share the feelings of your lead characters, it shows. There is a strange detachment in the narrator's voice.

Having said all that (Puh, it's way too long than I expected!), the book is not entirely without its moments of pride. Few witty lines from Chetan pop up like fire moths in a dark tunnel. But those are too few and far between to make any substantial damage to this review. :)