Two States...!

In the middle of all these exam confusions, I badly wanted to escape into fictional characters and have fun for a few hours. I was itching to buy Chetan Bhagat's new novel Two States-the story of my marriage, the latest of his work and more cinematic too (though three mistakes was equally bollywoodish). This book is no different than his earlier novels like Five Point Someone or three mistakes. Infact its a continuation of five point sumone hari, who is now doing a mba in IIM-A though this time he is Krish!! :)
The heroine, Ananya is a Tam Bram iyer from mylapore who eats chicken n will do anything to get a glass of beer..! A beautiful girl (of course, for d hero) who is also in IIM-A n lives with our hero krish ( literally live). Then the story goes on to explain how they convince their parents to accepting their marraige proposal. Since I am from Chennai, it was refreshing to read familiar street's n place's name as against some english name. It was heartening to read that "Nungambakkam" was considered the toughest word to pronounce for a North Indian guy!!

The author has captured the mood of tamilians in a pretty partial kinda way but his acknowledgment page includes an apology for taking a go at the "madrasis". He justifies that he takes a go on these ppl cause he feels they are his own. o much for justification!!!!

I dont know anything about a Punjabi family but i can relate to a lot of things he has described here. Like for instance, in Chennai, he says, people dont talk while eating but in Punjabi if such a silence is followed, then it will be construed that something has terribly gone wrong or someone had died.!! Now i can relate to this statement cause in my UG class, the most talkative gang was that of a North Indian gals gang and we(South Indian gang) have often got irritated because of their non-stop talking and high powered energy to chatter on.

In the initial few pages where the story is set in IIM-A, I found it quite interesting to note that even at IIMs non-commerce students keep quiet while d commerce students answer nu.. Cheers!! ( I wish my class would reflect the same kinda environment too.. *sigh*)
Oh yeah I forgot, there is quite a superb mention of citi bank and its operations.Whoa! I think the author is a victim of the "citi never sleeps" bug. Citi bank is one of my dream mnc where i would like to work someday in future. But this is the second time I am hearing about Citi's work place and how very different they are. (First time being when i attended a guest lecture on work life balance, the guest(a former citi bank employee who quit citi bank after she gave birth to a beautiful girl baby), told the crowd that citi bank is very understanding about women who are carrying. They understood their problems and gave them two options to consider-1. Either be a citi banker or 2. be a housewife..!!??!! How very understanding!!) Chetan Bhagat here tells d readers that when a citi bank manager says "You have a great future" that means you have no life at all now!! see my point??

Overall an interesting read throughout but its the same old masala about convincing parents.