Love, friendship, campus Life, heart break, job, challenges and sex- The quintessential formula for a bestseller. The readers these days have been bugged with the cocktails which use these ingredients whenever and wherever needed. I myself have slammed several book for the same. While I started with the book, I was expecting the usual boy meets girl, her puppy love, sex, misunderstandings and final patch up. Nonetheless I had decided to approach the book without prejudice.


The beginning of the plot was nothing exceptional. An average student, Rishabh, who plays truant to get pathetic results in his board exams.  Needless to say he has a group of ogler friends who crack mean jokes about women and a girl who is his best buddy whom he secretly admires. While Aarti, the love of his life and his friends get admission in engineering colleges, Rishabh continues to try for another round of entrance examinations.After spending a year behind the entrance coaching drama, he manages to get admission in a payment seat in the same college where Aarti studies, as her junior. While she saves him from the ragging bullies, she starts hanging around with the same guy to Rishabh’s Dismay. His classmates Karan and Ruhana becomes his next set of buddies. While Rishabh understands that Ruhana is his secret admirer, he rejects her advances due to his immaculate love for Aarti. Things get complicated when Rishabh ends up having a ugly spat with Aarti and their beautiful friendship reaches an end note.
Ruhana realises Rishabh’s  true love for Aarti and respects his feelings but eventually lust takes over love and they end up making out while each of them admits that it would be the first and last time. Rishabh manages to get a job by virtue of his father’s contacts. The pure vegetarian Rishabh becomes a pure non-vergetarian addicted to porn movies. Rishabh’s life takes a permanent U-turn when he visits Ruhana on his trip to Hyderabad. Something happens between them that makes Ruhana curse him to a life that Rishabh has never imagined. Making her curse come true, Rishabh goofs up his marriage day. Needless to say that the marriage was called off.Aarti comes back to his life but he is heartbroken to know that she is married and a mother too. After years of pointless life, Rishabh gets married to a girl whom he apparently doesn’t love till she breathed her last.  His story doesn’t end there. Thenceforth unfolds a tale of how a man who did everything wrong transforms into a national idol through a path of repentance.


The overall plot can be counted as yet another YA Romance but the narration and the plot development stood out. While reading the making out sequence between Rishabh and Ruhana, I almost gave up on the book since I have already mentioned in many of my  reviews that I don’t approve of squeezing in making out sequences unduly but as the story proceeds the scene is perfectly justified because otherwise it would not have been possible to register the further developments. One major doubt that dominated my mind was whether all men are obsessed with women’s midriff and cleavage. Rishabh’s character portrayal is the highlight of the book. The character is most realistic and balanced. He is neither the Mr. Goody two shoes nor the felon. His interaction with Ruhana at different instances is an example for this. The importance to relations is another point that has made the book likeable. Through Rishabh’s life author has conveyed a beautiful message of why it is important to forgive and move ahead. The book shows us various levels of friendship and shows the different dimensions of the same. Rishabh’s relation with his mother could have been portrayed in a better light. Eventhough she taunts him about his failures, it is difficult to believe that the mother-son relation is barren to such extend. This might be purely personal opinion of a mother with two sons and a daughter since I could not find myself having a distant relation with any of the kids.


Overall the book is a reasonable romantic story with all the elements for a bestseller but if you are looking for an intense tale with emotional turbulence, this is not the right one for you.