Sourav's Diary: Just Read ZERO PERCENTILE

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Just Read ZERO PERCENTILE

I first came to know about this book from Poonam Sharma's Blog. What attracted me first about this book is its subtitle "Missed IIT Kissed Russia" . I bought the book immediately from Flipkart (at just Rs 71,in case you want to know).

I just got the book delivered to me yesterday, and when I started reading the book today morning and being a social media addict, updated "reading Zero Percentile by Neeraj Chhibba..." got response that this book is an unsuccessful attempt to recreate the magic of Five Point Someone by Chetan Bhagat. Thanks to Poonam's review, I didn't bothered about this response. And after completing the book I can say, in no way it can be compared with Five Point Someone except in both the book the word "IIT" appeared. It surprised me a lot seeing how people comes to an opinion without having the actual knowledge.

Anyway talking about the book, I will not say this is one of the best book I have ever read, but I will definitely say this pretty good being début story by any new author.

So what is the story? It's a story of an ordinary boy from Delhi, having strange twists throughout in life. Name of the boy-Pankaj. Who came to this world highly anticipated and astrologically calculated, being the son of their parent after two unsuccessful attempt(read giving birth to daughters). First few pages of the story revolves much around the birth of Pankaj, which seemed a little boring to me. But first spark came to the story with the friendship of Pankaj, Motu and Priya. It will take you to the feeling of unconditional friendship of school life. Ups and downs in friendship at that age is nicely portrayed. With the advancement of the story, you can understand that Pankaj was falling in love with Priya, but he was too busy preparing for IIT JEE to express his feelings. Worth mentioning the Entrepreneurial spirit of Pankaj from that small age, helping the IIT Entrance coaching institute to flourish within years. Having experience of preparing for IITJEE myself I have only one question for the author-how can Pankaj maintain preparing for IIT, improving the coaching centre, and thinking about Priya all the time(as it is mentioned in the book), but any way may be the spices were needed to make the story interesting.

So Pankaj was on the verge of clearing IIT JEE, but a terrible accident changed his fate. He missed IIT and landed up in Russia to kiss (as the title suggests)his fortune. One thing I forgot to tell you, some astrologer had predicted in his childhood that one day he would go to abroad and fall in love with a woman there.

The story got more interesting from here, some difficult to remember and spell names of places in Russia, killing winter, wild hostel life, a free and daring approach to open sexualities there gave the story momentum.

Death of Pankaj's father brought Pankaj back to India and also back from his bohemian lifestyle. He met Motu in India and came to know that Priya is seeing someone and very soon they are getting married. This didn't bother Pankaj at that time, as love for Priya subsided completely at that time. He determined to complete his degree in Russia, fulfilling his parent's dream.

But to bear the expense of the dream, he took a job in his Senior's venture back in Russia. And from here started another chapter in Pankaj's story. Being ditched by his seniors cum bosses he took revenge by founding his own company and drowning his bosses.

Astrologers' prediction came true in it's wildest possible manner, through the Russian Language Teacher of Pankaj-Sveta. Their relationship started with some crazy sex, first propose of Pankaj's life from her, and beginning of short-live love story, which ended for some deep reason.

Pankaj had to get back to India, and guess what Priya got divorced, childhood closeness started coming back...story ended from where it all started-India, leaving traces of memory back in Russia.

I could have said the story is too impractical to be true, if not learned from my own life Truth is stranger than Fiction. So will I write ever story of my life? Someday...may be...stay tuned.