I'm Not Twenty Four...

November 15, 2011

I'm Not Twenty Four...

I’d been intrigued by the title when I’d first seen the book on one of my regular trips to the Oxford store. What had amused me was that author Sachin Garg was obviously a male & the title of the novel was something you’d expect a female to say. Well, this happens to be the story of a girl written down by a guy-in an uncanny resemblance to a Chetan Bhagat setting. But trust me guys the similarity ends there! This had been on my will-read list & I finally got lucky ‘coz of BlogAdda.

A chic Delhite MBA grad with stars in her eyes lands up in a tongue-twister town of Karnataka. Reason? Her parents named her ‘Saumya’-a unisexual name that’s misinterpreted to belong to a guy. (All the more reason why parents shouldn’t permanently name their kids without asking them first!) Saumya is flabbergasted as her dreams of dazzling her colleagues with her shapely figure in prim formals are dashed. (Any girl would be if she painstakingly lost weight only to realise no one gave two hoots about her figure). But she has to give it a shot; she didn’t ‘toil’ through B-school to quit this easily. And off she is to Toranagallu(somehow I keep saying toorangnagulla in my head :-/ ).

The short synopsis at the back of this book says that this is a story that you would never believe happened. Through the first half of the book I was still waiting for that to happen. I mean so what’s new about an uptown girl adjusting to rural environment & all that? We get that on TV every time. But then comes the Indian hippie Shubhro. Saumya meets him in a chance sight-seeing trip & has an immediate crush on him. This guy is as enigmatic as any girl’s fantasy. At first glance you won’t even know if he’s Indian! They have a short drunken bash after which Saumya almost forgets him, only to meet him again at a very critical point in her life.

Shubhro’s character is much like a kaleidoscope-each time you look at him you see different colours. As they say all that glitters is not gold. Saumya can’t help being contemptuous as well as smitten by this hippie. And which girl wouldn’t if they met a guy who looked like Hugh Grant, played the guitar, cooked heavenly ..wait stop that’s enough! But the only problem was he is a vagabond sort of guy( not to mention almost nympho!)-never stays put at a place for more than 3 months! So Saumya decides Greek God or not, she won’t have anything amorous to do with him. But that doesn’t prove to be easy…as the 90^th day draws nearer, she can’t help wishing for more & even wondering if he loves her. You should read the book find out what happens-the climax is totally worth it!

The other characters in this book include Saumya’s boss-Ashish is quite amiable & any employee would be lucky to have a boss like him. Her colleagues included Amit- who uses a “bucketful mustard oil in his hair” & Mallapa-a very smart & fun-loving guy, someone I wish Sachin had written more about. Vartika is the BFF every girl has & is the one source of sanity for her during the initial days of horror at Toranagallu & well she is the reason behind Shubro learning.. ah go read the book!

Though the book was slow-paced, it was worth the wait & yes there are some rather disturbing descriptions of accidents happening at the steel plant where Saumya works, so if you have a hyperactive imagination(like I do) don’t read that part at night.