2 states

Author: Chetan Bhagat

You know how a really great author who writes really great books. somehow each successive book he writes doesn’t strike the kinda cord that the first one did…….. wow thats a long sentence!!!

Anyways, presenting.. the author who took the country by surprise and awe with his very first book about 3 friends trying to make it in the most academically acclaimed institute of thew country. Yup, the same book which we saw being potrayed on a 70 mm screen a few weeks ago. Chetan Bhagat.

I don’t know if you agree but I really liked 5 point someone, I thought 1 night at the call centre was nice too, but i really hated 3 mistakes… and i can’t seem to decide about 2 states. Hey wait a minute… did it ever strike to you, that all Bhagat’s books have names containing numbers?? I mean yeah, he’s an IIT-IIM guy, but seriously.. can all he think about are numbers????

This book, 2 states, is about how Chetan met Anusha, his wife, at IIM for the first time. Their names of course have been changed to Krish Malhotra and Ananya Swaminathan. He being the punjabi boy and she being the Tamilian Brahmin girl. While all over the world marriages are simple girl loves boy, boy loves girl, Indian and specially inter-caste Indian marriages have 3 more steps:

1) Girl’s family has to love boy.
2) Boy’s family has to love girl.
3) Both families have to love each other.

And if then, the boy and girl still love each other, well, they get married. Thats what the book’s back cover and the story-line says. Its a very amusingly written saga of the attempts of Krish and Ananaya to convince their parents that the choice of life partner they’ve made is the correct one.

The story is cliche, and we know the ending before-hand, but it still is written with a lot of witty one-liners, rather comic incidents and wonderful style of expressing random thoughts popping up inside the central character’s head……. typical Chetan Bhagat style.

What I loved most though was, the amazingly real and funny description of punjabi traditions and living style. Being a punjabi myself, I could connect to the stuff he narrated at many points. Altogether,a fun read.