Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Book Review : 2 States - The Story of my Marriage



Author : Chetan Bhagat
Image source : Amazon

Another book by Chetan Bhagat. Having read his earlier three books (Five point someone, One night @ call center, 3 mistakes) already, I am not a great fan of his writing but still I picked this book up as I was looking for a light reading after having read some serious books for past few months. Surprisingly, I found this one much more interesting than his earlier books in the sense that it is funny at many places and narration is engaging. This is an autobiographical take on intercommunity marriages.

It starts with a typical scene at IIMA and Krish, a Punjabi boy falling for Ananya, a "Madrasi" Iyer girl. The things were under their control till the time they were in college. But when they decide to take the next step of getting married, the insurmountable task starts. The hard part was not the decision to get married but how to convince both the families to like their future son-in-law and future daughter-in-law, who do not belong to the same culture and how to make their families like each other. The book highlights the point that marriages in India are not just restricted to a boy and a girl, it involves the extended families of the boy and girl too. The parts where the cultural differences and dissimilarities are pointed out are really funny and if you are from one of these two states or have some idea about the same, you can easily relate to the things and can nod your head along. Some comparisons were really witty and neatly put.

His earlier books have already become the inspiration for Hindi movies and this story has all the ingredients to be one too. I think Chetan Bhagat wants his books to be typical masala movies only, no substance that can satisfy the literary interests. Overall a time pass book, a typical "one day book". Read it, enjoy it and toss it away. Definitely not a keepsake.

2 comments:

  1. I havent read any Chetan Bhagat creation but i dont think i shall be a great fan of his...but what other people have told me is that this book is really encaptivating at first and boring in middle.
    I liked your last lines .."Read it, enjoy it and toss it away. Definitely not a keepsake." Ha! Ha!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Wish. His "Five Point Someone" is already creating a lot of controversy.

    ReplyDelete

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