2 States

After watching the EVAM's Five Point Someone stage show, I had good reputation for Chetan Bhagat's novel (despite many claimed EVAM show was better than the book version), and his recent novel 2 States, didn't disappoint. A great soul gave me the book, as the soul had a severe stomach pain from laughing and wanted to see me suffer from the same (FYI, If you want to become a great soul, lend me a book and if you wanna become greatest then don't ask it back). When I saw the front cover, the first thing which attracted me was the TamilNadu's outline, bcz I hail from there (well I realized there was a another state's outline, in the cover only after I finsihed reading the novel, a typical Indian state of mind towards their states), and the second was synopsis

Love marriages around the world are simple :
Boy loves girl. Girl loves boy. They get Married
In India there are few more steps:
Boy loves girl, Girl loves boy.
Girl's family has to love boy. Boy's family has to love girl.
Girl's family has to love boy's family. Boy's family has to love girl's family.
Girl and Boy still love each other. They got married.

Whole novel revolves the additional few more Indian steps, with a neatly carved characters Krish and Ananya. Ananya, a modern Tamil Brahmin, who wanted to substitue curd rice with Chicken and Rasnana with Beer and Krish, the narrator of this story, a Punjabi settled in Delhi, who would never dare to replace the paranthas floating in Butter with idlis floating in a cup of Sambhar, meet in a hostel mess. Krish scarifices his rasulla for a supposedly above average looking but as per IIMA standards a strikingly beautiful, Annaya. Krish, like many other guys, suffers from the disease of falling in love on first sight. News of the Strikingly beautiful gal spreads in IIMA faster than Swine Flu. (For god sake, some one find a vaccine for this love at first sight epidemic). Now Krish with his IIT'an formula solving ability solves the mystery of love and breaks the heart of many of his friend. And this smooth drives gets a break on the convocation, when the hyper-talkative Punjabi family meets the more reserved Tamil family. Rest of the story revolves around the efforts taken to convince the Paranthas and Dosas and finally end up creating a new dish. Why am I thinking too much about food, focus... focus on the blog...

It wasn't roller coaster ride, but definitely a journey in a Hyderabad roads with sufficient twists and turns. I really enjoyed the description and sequence of actions happening during the Punjabi and Tamil marriages. Lucid and the hilarious style of writing, would make sure it would never get nominated for a Booker's prize but would definetly keep the publisher happy.

Bottom Line : Happened to miss this book, don't worry you wouldn't miss much as you might this watched the same story in many movies. Of course a lot in the recent tamil movies (Boy and Girl trying to get approval for love, by convincing than revolting). I recommend this book for people suffering from love at first sight syndrome and wanna convert the infection into disease by marrying the same girl.