Book Review: Revolution 2020

This latest book by Chetan Bhagat is the story of how an engineering-entrance-exam-failure gets rich using a corrupt system and how a friend of his tries to fight against the system.

‘Revolution 2020: Love, Corruption, Ambition’ is

80% about Love - the crappiest love story I have ever read.

15% about Corruption – All that is mentioned is how bundles of cash are passed on to get things done, I think corruption has many other forms and many more consequences than what are mentioned in the book.

5% about Ambition – that is Ambition for the right reasons.

The story is so clichéd, there is no element of surprise at all. The style of writing is so bland…it could have well been the essay of a school goer (minus the ‘love story’ bits of course).

The characters are very poorly etched, you can hardly connect with any of them.

The lead character is so forgettable, you feel nothing for the character while reading his trials and triumphs and sacrifices.

The characterization of the girl in the story is pathetic. Worse still, he goes on to make too many over generalized statements about girls. And the girls in this author’s books seem to become filthier by each book!

The only sane character is shown to face difficulties for his sane-ness and is often shown in poor light, except for his passion to bring change.

The author had written about engineering days in ‘5 Point Someone’ and about the IIM days in ‘2 States’. This latest novel goes on and on about AIEEE and JEE coaching and Class 12 days! 

What next? School days and then Pre-school?

The book was such a waste of time; it is neither humorous nor serious. It does not convey any message or have any impact.

Good Old Days - Music

Flashback:

Just when I had entered high school, the music bug had bitten me. 

Knowing the latest pop songs was the 'in' thing and watching music channels was my fad.

I remember I used to come back from school by 4:30 and start browsing all the music channels right away. I usually had a deadline of 7:00...that was when my grandma used to conquer the TV remote and start watching a series of somber soaps.

So, 4:30-7:00 was my most revered time of the day, the time of the day I anxiously awaited. God forbid, if there was a power or cable connection disruption during that time, I would start abuses on the TV.

The music channels coolly occupied the convenient slots of 1-9 on the TV and I used to go jumping from one channel to the other to find a song I liked, till my fingers and/ or my eyes hurt. After like 30 jumps of channels or 1 to 1 and a 1/2 hour of channel-surfing, I used to like a new song or get to see a favorite song - THAT used to be the best moment of the day, and well worth the painful wait! On an average I used to get to see one favorite song, and if I was lucky, maybe two...or even three if that day was blessed!

I used to hum the song/ songs till I failed to recollect how the music in a part of the song goes and jump up in excitement when I could faintly catch a favorite song when played by a neighbour. 

The list of my favorite songs kept growing and they remained favorites for 8 years. 

Present:

I like a song on TV/ Facebook/ Google+/ Orkut or listen to it faintly from some car when at a traffic signal or from a neighbour and Google the few words I manage to catch from the song. Or I like some music at a restaurant or shopping mall and Google the same. Voila! I now have 24x7 access to the song coz I can download it, sing-along with it by Googling the lyrics, and watch it again and again and again...till I get so sick of the song that I wouldn't want to hear it again for atleast another decade...all this in a matter of a week, or a couple of weeks if the song is really lucky.

What's my favorite song now? ...Uh....um... :D