Love, A Rather Bad Idea

by Anirban Mukherjee

In September, the month where IIT-ians do distinctly non-IITian things, Samar was having the time of his life. With Rock shows, JAM sessions, debates and politics, his life resembled a colourful graffiti. Adding chaos to this randomness were his three partners-in-crime, Pranav, Skimpy and Jiya. Together they made sure that life was impossibly wild and barely legal. Things hit a crescendo when Samar found himself as the frontrunner in the race for the head of the student body at IIT. And that is when the tide began to turn, in a way Samar could have never imagined. A causal ambition threatened to come true, and threw at Samar dilemmas that would stump any IITian with a pair of glasses. Dilemmas which required skills not taught in any classroom, including the secret art of disaster management.

Genres: Fiction, Indian Literature

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Ankita · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked this on an online shopping site... and even with the 15% discount, the book ain't worth it.... i can think of much better ways to spend 85 bucks - ice candy for 17 straight days, a chicken burger, junk jewellery,kolhapuri chappals.... and loads of goodies from the flea market!

Stereotyped characters, jerky pace and an almost non existent storyline... the icing on the cake is the climax!!! OMG, the author must've been running late for a meeting and decided to just wrap things up... i have never read a more hurried and nonsensical end to any story... don't waste your time on this one...

[Anandh Sundar]

One of the many campus noir books. Good effort to try and explain but nothing really unique. One time read.

[Utkarsh Singh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Typical Bollywood story...

[Anup Nair · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yes, even I was wondering the same, have I read it correctly and is this the title of the book. Seemed different and that is how I ended up buying up this one. The book is written by Anirban Mukherjee, an IITian, who is narrating an incident, happened at the time when IITians do all NON-IITian things.
This is when he introduces our main character, Samar and his bunch of friends Pranav and Skimpy. Life was all time high for Samar, as he had a good looking girl, Jiya, by his side and he was also heading the race to become the head of the student body (General Secretary) in IIT.

The book tells the story is three parts, first with the introduction of the characters and the collage life, especially that time of the year which all ITians wait for.
Then followed by the part where Samar tries hard to win the G-Sec. The feeling of getting to the top makes him blind, self centered and selfish. This is when things start to fall at wrong places for him, and life takes a drastic turn where he ends up loosing all his close friends.
Final part, when he realizes what he has lost in the horse race and his efforts to patch up things with all his friends, but at a price.

This book is fun to read, a light hearted one with a bit of fiction added here and there. The only problem is I couldn't get why this name was chosen for the book. The book also comes with a tag line saying "He could've had everything. If only he had said 'Thank You'.". But I feel, "He could've had everything, if only he had said 'Sorry'.". The start of the book is a bit draggy, but then goes on till the end with a steady pace.

My verdict for this one will be 3 stars, worth reading especially when it comes at just 100 bucks.

[Sundeep Supertramp · Rating 3 out of 5]

the story was pretty much story of the negative side of a boy's life..

this is one of my fastest reads.. and the reason was that i couldn't wait for the happy part..

english was pretty complicated.. not like the one of chetan's or other indian poets...

over all the book was pretty good.. and a 3/5 for athat...

[Suresh Srivathsan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad book, rather light reading. I liked that verbal exchanges between the book's main characters, but th plot itself was very thin. As another reviewer had indicated, the book seemed to end in a hurry.

[Glister · Rating 2 out of 5]

so boringggggggggg

[Subhashree Chanda · Rating 1 out of 5]

very boring.
didn't even read it completely

[Shilpa Shree Venkatesh · Rating 2 out of 5]

just another IITtypes love story.there is nothing new in the story, all that attracts is the title of the book.read it if u can no more listen to your boring classroom lectures.

[Komal]

Pathetic Book.. Not even worth of rating nor reading.. Did not complete it.. left it in half..