The 2 mistakes of my life

From: ArunKGeorge@gmail.com
Sent: 06/3/2008 10:48 AM
To: info@chetanbhagat.com
Subject: The 2 mistakes of my life

Dear Chetan,

This email is just a confession letter. You have let me down and I have no reason to read your future books. You don't know me. I'm an ordinary techie from Bangalore who read your books. And somehow I felt I could write to you after that. I can actually tell others what I am feeling right now, and that I am anyway doing through my blog - which is to request you to stop writing for everybody's sake. (I know this was kind of a strange sentence, but had to match with your hero's)

I made two mistakes, I want to go into details, as I am not a fool like your hero who just gives sneak previews and no details in his e-mails.

My first mistake - I bought and read your second book "One night @ a call center"
My second mistake - I bought and read your third book "The 3 mistakes of my life"

Now if you ask me why I bought your second and third books, its simple - because I am a huge fan of your first book. It has all that ever needs to be told about the college spirit. College to my friends and me was a place where we did everything except studies. Your book was such a refreshing one at retelling our own stories to us so well that I could see myself in most of the situations narrated in your book. It evoked memories about our (mis)adventures, pricked nostalgic senses and often brought a lost-in-memory-kind-of-smile to my face each time I read or thought about a passage.

Now after that path breaking book, you came out with ON@CC. In my opinion, it was a poorly written sequel to your first book. I was still ready to give you the benefit of doubt as you were not an experienced writer and also because you had at least selected a modern plot. Even though the story was a complete bore, the setting and some of the incidents had something attractive about them, because it was all happening around a call center. Now since your readers somewhat accepted that book also, you somehow thought you could come out with any damn nonsensical story line and still manage to get away with that. That is evident from your third book. What kind of a story is that? Apart from that utterly stupid story-line, do you think the book has any other USP which will take it through to the shores? Stories of unemployed youth trying out their luck in a number of business ventures, at the same time engaging themselves in their other passions is told over and again by countless storytellers of our nation. Do we need an IIT+IIM->IBanker to offer us the old wine in an old bottle yet another time?

Your books tagline says its "Based on real events,..." Márquez sets some of his works on his Macondo in a magical way. Rushdie also showed us how to tell a story interspersed with real events through The Midnight Children. If your attempt was to do anything similar to that, I am afraid, it was a failure. In your story, the real incidents looked more like forced into the storyline because there is a need for a catalyst. I don't think they jelled well to the storyline. The real incidents were kind of standing out from the main flow. Something like the characters read newspaper and found out that there was a volcano eruption happening somewhere or that somebody landed in mars. The effect of these incidents on the storyline was minimal except for the last major incident mentioned. But then that is the bare minimum one expects from a book ‘based on real events’. Anyways, as somebody mentioned somewhere else, an attempt to describe the relevance of the real incidents to the storyline will be like opining on the saltiness of pickle in a hootch shop where a spurious hootch catastrophe just took place.

This e-mail is not a sentimental decision. As many around me tell me, I am a good techie because I have little emotion. This is no knee-jerk reaction. I waited over three days, watched my missus' silent face whenever I was reading your book. But after all that, when I finished the book, I felt like throwing the book out of the window, I had no choice left. I have no regrets either. May be I’d have wanted to talk to some random bimbette once more but that doesn’t seem like such a good idea right now, as my missus might read this.

Sorry to bother you with this. But I felt like I had to tell someone. You have ways to improve as an author but you have written a decent book (when you contained yourself to IITs, IIMs and may be I Banking). So, please please restrict your creative freedom to your familiar terrain and abstain from venturing into the love life of gujjus, marwaris, punjabis, mallus and the like. There are umpteen numbers of stupid idiots out there, who call themselves 'writers', to do that job. Please don't add yourself that long list. Have a good day.

Regards,
Techie

If you are completely clueless as to what this is all about, please read this.

5 . some1

Reasons why ‘five point someone’ should be treated as an epic. All the guys out there should read, understand and remember the following words-of-wisdom.

1.
“I am so sorry. Are you all right?” she enquired, tucking her hair behind her ear.

I was not all right, and it was her damn fault. But when a young girl asks a guy if he is all right, he can never admit he is not.

“I was actually jogging,” I said, holding her hand and getting up as slowly as I could without being obvious. Who wants to abandon a pretty girl’s hand? Anyway, I had to after I was standing up.

Don’t ever miss a chance for an intro.

2.
We got into the car. I saw her sit carefully in the driver’s seat, as if she was running the starship Enterprise or something. Then she placed her bare foot on the accelerator. Now may be it is because I am an engineer, but that was hot. Bare female skin on metal is enormously sexy.

I know this sounds weird, but I agree with the author. There are other such sights, like a bangle-d hand holding a sledgehammer in a smithy workshop, and many others...

3.
I saw Neha again, it was a nice surprise.

“Hi” I said, raising my hand to catch her attention. She looked at me, and then kept looking, her face expressionless. She acted as if she did not recognize me. Then she went back to flipping pages of the notebooks she had just bought. Now that was hell, I mean, if you are in a public place and say ‘hi’ to a girl, all beaming and everything and she’s like ‘have we been introduced?’

The shopkeeper looked at me, as did a few other customers, and I felt like low-life though I gave it another try. “Neha it’s me! Remember the car accident in the morning?” I said.

“Excuse me” she said huffily and departed. This time the shopkeeper looked at me like I was a regular sex-offender.

Address her in public on your own risk. If you dare address her when her relatives are around, chances for your relatives to bail you out are higher.

4.
“Hi” said Neha.

Go to hell, was my instant mental reflex. But I turned to look at her and damn, she was pretty. And with that one tiny dimple on her right cheek flashing every time she smiled... Now try saying ‘go to hell’ to that.

Will somebody who managed to do this please raise his hand?

5.
It is hard enough to say no to pretty girls or to ice-cream but when it’s offered together, it is well nigh impossible.

Any doubts, anybody?

6.
“I said I am sorry, Harri” she said, and touched my arm again like she did earlier. I kind of liked that, I mean, which guy wouldn’t. You have this pretty girl all smiley and touching your arm; better than ice-cream I tell you.

Do I need to say anything more?

7.
“Yes I even got a license” she chirped and opened her bag to show it to me. She started taking stuff out of her handbag and a million things came out – lipsticks, lip balms, creams, bindis, earrings, pens, mirrors, wet tissues and other stuff that one can live without.

Important lesson: Never open a lady’s bag, you sure gonna get lost in the things that are gonna pop out.

8.
“Still I like chivalrous men” she said, repacking her bag and the million belongings.

I did not know if it meant something. I mean, did she want me to know what kind of men she liked, or did she want me to be like the man she liked, or did she like me. Who knows? Figuring out women is harder than topping a ManPro quiz.

Epics are written on this topic.

9.
She had made it pretty safe for me, but I tell you, the first time you ask a girl out for a date, its like the hardest thing. Almost as stressful as vivas.

Experience speaks!

10.
I did not answer her. I mean, I just thought it weird that I could call her only on that one day a month, like I had a dental appointment or something. But girls are weird, I was learning.

Start learning.

11.
That is the thing with girls. They are like half your size or something, but if they know you like them, then boss you around. Who the hell did she think she was?

So true :_(

12.
Like a trained pet, I got up from the seat opposite and sat next to her; pretty girls have this power to turn Mary, making lambs out of people.

Anyone has any valid points against this?

13.
This time, madam had asked for a gift. She made his whole deal about how I actually never gave her anything, and how other girls got gifts from their friends. I mean, it was asinine logic if you ask me, as there were things she could give me, and without much capital investment. To have the nerve to ask for a gift on top of this deprivation is something only woman can do, as they are made differently after all.

(If this looks like a reply to one of the recent posts in a popular blog, then its pure coincidence ;_))

14.
Maybe it was not completely true. But it wasn’t all lies either (and in any case, it is about saying the right thing to girls, who gives a damn if it is true or not....)

Remember, its all about timing...

15.
Girls are beautiful, lets face it, and life is quite, quite worthless without them.

Period

16.
Man why is it so hard to explain stuff to girls. Cant she just get on with it? Should I say something dumb that she wants to hear?

“Neha, I know I did all those things. But at one level, it wasn’t me. It wasn’t your Hari” I said. Obviously, I made no sense. But that is the thing with girls. Give them confusing crap and they fall for it.

This is a trade secret. Plz don’t reveal.

17.
Ryan stayed silent; I guess he was searching for another topic.

“How is your girl?” he asked after straining his brain for twenty seconds.

That is how Ryan addresses Neha. He never says her name, as if she being ‘my girl’ is more important than her being Neha.

“Neha is great. Going for a movie next week”.

“So you guys serious?”

“Serious about what?”

“I don’t know, like you love her and everything?”

“I don’t know” I said.

That’s how men talk about their relationships. Nobody knows anything – neither the questioner nor the answerer.

This is the ultimate one. I agree with this cent percent. That last sentence summarizes all that is to be said about how men see relationships..