Not as impressive as expected. Review on Five Point Someone - Chetan Bhagat

I had heard about this book a lot and myself being an IITian, I had a strong desire to find out what's in this book. I was more than overjoyed when an old friend presented me with Chetan Bhagat's ''Five Point Someone''. I finished reading the book in several hours during a long-haul flight, more out of curiosity than interest, to find what's there in those pages and the title of this review sums up my overall assessment of the book : it is good but I won't call it exactly absorbing. At times it gets pretty boring, sometimes unrealistic and it is not at all as impressive as I expected it to be.

The entire book revolves around three main characters : Ryan, Alok and Hari,all three students at IIT Delhi. The book basically covers their journey as engineering students from freshman to senior year at one of the premier engineering colleges in India. Ryan is the most dynamic and colorful of these three characters. He is well built, handsome, intelligent, witty, in short, has qualities that all young men would yearn for. But the reader does not fail to notice that in spite of all these good qualities, he is naively whimsical at times. The author identifies himself with Hari, a boy with an average body type, silly enough to fall into Ryan's whims, not the one who would readily impress girls, a die-hard 'wannabe Ryan.' Alok, on the other hand is a complete contrast to Ryan. He is kind of nerdy, a serious guy opposed to the whimsical brainwaves of Ryan, somewhat overburdened by the responsibilities towards his distressed family. The dynamics and interplay of these three characters mould the course of the story. Occasionally we have a fourth character chipping in : Hari's girlfriend Neha, daughter of a strict and orthodox professor Cherian. The character of Cherian is well-balanced by Professor Veera who is more abreast of his times, values ingenuity rather than grade point averages (GPAs) and is ever ready to try out new and novel ways of research and teaching. The book is all about how an underperforming underdog at IIT transcends from five point something to five point someone: from being written off as a student with a low GPA to entering the professional world at the end of four grueling years and becoming 'someone'. The character of Cherian possesses dualities and undergoes transformation, thereby lending some dramatic content to the story.

In some aspects the book provides a true insight into the so called 'system' followed at IITs and may be, at many other respected educational institutes. The 'system' is rigid, overloads students, suppresses ingenuity. The students entering into IIT are all bright ones, much higher above the average of the country, and a GPA is not a good yardstick to measure their potential. But just like prisoners in a jail, the system assigns GPA tags to students. It supports and nurtures age-old ways of teaching which is a damper to ingenuity and novelty in science and engineering. As a result many bright students like Ryan find themselves complaining and sometimes revolting against the system. Moreover different students have different needs and the curriculum should be flexible enough to accomodate their varied interests. But the system followed at IITs brings everyone under the same roof, without catering to individual needs and interests. This is so different from the curriculums in the American universities where one gets to choose one's courses for the semester. At the heart of Five Point Someone echoes this urgent need to change the 'system' of education. The emphasis of education should not be a mere number (GPA) but to instil the urge to learn, encourage novelty and keep abreast of the rapidly changing fields of science and engineering. Thus, in the story,when Professor Cherian says that the standard of students are falling, he does not assess himself as to where he stands with respect to his own teaching and research, whether he has updated his own ideas of research and teaching. When one teaches in a dynamic field like engineering it is very important to update oneself and one's students and to inspire ingenuity. It is rueful that such old faggots jam our education 'system', sometimes making life hell for the students as we observe in the book.

The book provided me with a nostalgic recollection of the most vulnerable time of life : the college years. There are the simple joys of college life : pals hanging out together, taking bumpy scooter rides, boozing, sharing each other's joys and sorrows, holding together through thick and thin, the bliss of first romance and the first kiss. On the other hand, these are also the formative years of one's career. The assignments, lab work, practicals, the majors and those inevitable 'night-outs' all form a part and parcel of college life at IIT. Hari's first meeting with Neha may be somewhat dramatic but that's one of my favorite portions of the book. I find the author's description of her bare feet, her red toenails with the little ringlets, 'barefoot on metal' very sensual. But some portions of the book really challenge credibility. I mean, I seriously don't think that any IITian would be gutsy enough to make out in a professor's house with his daughter, especially knowing how strict and orthodox professor Cherian is. The way Hari is initially portrayed, he appears quite tame and timid but he seems to be dramatically emboldened by his affinity for Neha. The way he swings himself into Neha's room from the roof at midnight to wish her on her birthday calls for a degree of acrobatics that the average IITian lacks or rather, would ever risk for their girl friend, however endearing she may be. Then again, not many IITians, however desperate they may be, would endorse the lunatic idea of stealing question papers and actually implementing it, neither are the IIT professors so casual about major papers so as to leave them unlocked in their office while they are gone. They would at least lock it up in a safe. Moreover I found no credible reason why Cherian should leave a key to his office with the car-keys used by his daughter. Even if we accept these , an IIT disciplinary committee summoned on students getting caught red-handed trying to steal major papers, would come up with at least a year suspension of the students involved. ( I know that students getting caught while trying to cheat in exams at IIT are offered a semester suspension. The act of stealing major papers is far more grave offence and hence would elicit a harsher punishment). And when Alok survives the fall from the ninth floor insti roof merely cushioned by his fat and the water of the insti fountain without any severe and permanent damage except for a slight limp, which is nothing short of a miracle, I would say that the author has over-dramatized the story and is taking the readers for a ride to give his story a happy ending. (Of course a happy ending would be more popular than a grim one resulting in Alok's death). I feel that such dramatization is cheap and a quite unnecessary deviation from reality. It lowers the rating of the book in its ability to portray a true, credible picture of life at IIT.

In the end, I would like to say that ignoring all the dramatics, the book scores some good points about college life at IIT and the IIT system and the rusty attitude of some of the IIT professors. But perhaps it would be unfair to point fingers at IIT only. The problems lie with the system throughout, not just the IITs. Only that, students come into IIT with lots of high expectations which are seldom met. But by their virtues majority of the IIT students rise above the system to be the person they are - from ''five point something'' to ''five point someone.''