One night @ the call center ..

Just finished reading 'one night @ call center' by Chatan Bhagat .. and I am sorry to say but I did not find it as good as the 'Five Point Someone'... In fact I did not like it as much .. If I have to rate this book, I would give it 2 (or if I am in a generous mood then 2.5 - 3) stars ...

Why ? well, lets see ... first and foremost, according to me, the writer has taken too much time to set the plot for this book. The story is far-stretched ... The romantic part does manage to get you reading more but then I feel a lot of the stuff is unnecessary and irrelevant to the story (which was not the case in Five Point Someone (FPS) .. ) The main punch line of the story is 'A phone call from God' ... but the phone call from God does not appear till the last few pages of the book .. secondly, according to me the character of Radhika is totally unnecessary and serves the only purpose of lengthening the short story .. and so is military uncle ..

OK. Lets talk a ittle about the story line. The story mostly revolves around the life of one person named 'Shyam' .. you can say he is the hero of the story, Priyanka being the heroine. Everyone else is just supporting actors like Vroom, Esha, Radhika, Bakshi, Military Uncle ... They have their share of the story but its not much .. its mainly Shyam and Priyanka who've broken up and Priyanka has agreed to marry some guy named Ganesh who works for Microsoft. (This is the biggest reason I didnt like the story ! why does the guy working in Microsoft get to loose ;) ? .. I am in the same boat as Ganesh at least as far as the job/marriage scene goes .. hell no ! I dont like that .. hehe .. just kidding :) ) Shyam is this guy who is talented but has lost his self-confidence on the way and has accepted his defeat .. In the end, like a hindi movie story, the heroine chooses the hero ... so the end isnt something great / different from what you would expect throughout the book ... so the book looses a few points there ... The prologue mentions that the book is gonna try to capture the life of Indian youth .. but I dont think it does anything like that ... it does not revolve around the life of an averge call-center guy ... so its still not a representative of Indian youth ... Also in the end, the girl in the train compartment should not have been God again ! I mean, that was just too much to take by the end of it ! ;) First I thought she would be Payal but alas ...

OK, enough criticism ... here are some good things .. Keeping up with the tradition of FPS, the one-liners in this book are great too ! The romantic scenes are very well described and bring a smile on your face ... So, heres the thing, emotionally this book does pretty well .. all different emotions, such as Shyam's jealousy, Vrooom's anger, Esha's depression, Shyam & Priyanka's romance etc are well described which is why I give the book 2 - 3 stars ...


But yeah, I can understand when girls like ON@CC better than FPS ... FPS is this naughty book which is very boyish and it does not cover emotions that widely ... However, ON@CC, is all about emotions and one's life ! (and not just life @ IIT ) .. But I havent yet met a single GUY who has told me that ON@CC is better than FPS ... and I totally agree !! FPS rocks but I cant say the same about ON@CC ... Sorry Chetan !

Its been a long long time !

Yeah ! I know .. its been more than a week since I last posted .. you know nothing great happened in life ! no trekking, no cricket games, no funny, weird experiences .. nothing worth writing / mentioning .. same old life like a drop of water in the flow which follows the drop of water ahead of it ...

You must be thinking, I must have done something at least right ? what did I do last 10 days or so ? well .. nothing great other than work ..wait .. scratch that .. I did watch a couple of good Hindi movies - 'corporate' and 'Omkara' .. They are good movies but both have sad endings .. I appreciate the director's effort and everyone's acting & everything ... just that according to me, movies should not have sad endings .. I go to a theatre to have some fun, laugh my heart out .. be happy ! But if at the end of the movie, if I come out crying and depressed, whats the point ! whatever happened to entertainment !! (and I watched both of them the same day !! just imagine my state at the end of the day !) But anyway, I guess I could have posted reviews of those movies, but as I said earlier, I think everyone should see the movie to rate it ... anyway, coming back to the main topic, why I didnt blog for such a long time, I think one always goes through these spikes when sometimes suddenly everything around you starts glowing and sometimes its all dull suddenly ... I guess I was in the valley of one of those spikes recently ...

but I am back :) .. actually something interesting happened today .. and it made me feel good .. compelled me to write this post .. I felt like I am back in Mumbai .. inside Microsoft, we have this internal email group (or distribution list) called 'MS Indians from Bombay' ... some girl emailed to the group in the afternoon @ around 3 pm asking if there are any places in the seattle area which have 'misal-pav' the assal mumbai dish .. she has a craving for it .. One guy replied saying that there isnt one but to help her craving, he attached this mouth-watering pic of the misal-pav... and that was it !!

Everyone started replying saying they are feeling sooo hungry after seeing that pic and we should have a get-together of such a kind .. within 1 hour, more than 10 people volunteered to do different stuff starting from taking head count for such an event to booking a venue, cooking food and what not ! The energy everyone showed was just amazing .. By 5 pm in the evening, the date for a get-together was finalized ( its on 12th August) ! I mean it was just awesome .. Just a simple question from some girl, initiated this whole potluck-sort-of get-together ... simply amazing !
It reminded me of the 'fast-paced' life of Mumbai where you hardly have time and you have to be alert, on your toes all the time !! It took me back to those days when I used to hang outside the train holding on to the sides ... thats the time, the place where you feel that the difference between life and death is soo less !! A place where there is rush even in 1.30 am train to Khopoli from Dadar and you literally have to fight your way in !! God ! I love Mumbai .. and I miss it too ...

Anyway, I will keep you posted on the event and its proceeding ... Another thing that happened, is I got my hands on 'One night @ call center' the other day ... I have started reading it and will finish it in 2 / 3 days ...