Chetan Bhagat’s “Five Point Someone”

This is probably most talked about book in contemporary Indian English writing because of its own standing as well as due to the later adaptation into the movie “3 Idiots” which became the biggest box office hit in Indian movie industry. This book established Chetan Bhagat as successful writer even though he could not get similar success with his later books.

This is a story of 3 friends of who join IIT and soon find how difficult it is to survive. The book talks about all the things that students in this age face or want to experience during their college education. There are failures in exams, differences with professors with the way they want to teach and the way in which students want to learn. There are also relationships, ragging, projects and student rivalry. But most important of all, there is friendship that develops between students who come from very different backgrounds to stay together. The friends made during this time are really special as I can say for sure with my own experience.  

The book is mostly humourous but it has dark side as well about students failing to cope up with academic pressure and then taking extreme step of taking their own life. This book was a really refreshing attempt to write a story in a simple language using today’s events and concerns. Even though the book is a work of fiction, the author who himself studied in IIT has taken a lot of real life stuff as background for the plot of the book.

The movie “3 Idiots” was based on this book but I liked the movie for very different reasons and not necessarily because it was based on “Five Point Someone”.