Five Point Someone: Chetan Bhagat Book
Summary
The novel Five Point Someone, written by Chetan Bhagat, is set at the Indian Institute Of Technology, India's leading engineering school. The Three Idiots was eventually made into a popular film.
What is 'Five Point Someone' about?
Ryan Oberoi, a brilliant yet free-spirited student, is the protagonist of the narrative. True education, he says, comes from critical thinking and enjoying life rather than memorizing formulae and textbooks. Ryan and his pals are ecstatic at the prospect of attending the famous IIT, but they had no clue how much pressure they would face.
Is Five Point Someone by Chetan Bhagat a good read?
I liked this book a lot because the characters are so real, and being a student myself, I can understand their stress. There are several amusing instances, including one in which Ryan alters a few essential words in a speech to be delivered by a rival named Chatur. This makes the speech ridiculous and causes the entire room to erupt in laughter. The Number Five Someone also deals with the significant issue of school stress and the suffocation of students' creativity.
Why was Chetan Bhagat's five-point someone a big hit?
A narrative about relationships written by a man is always a welcome addition to the world's bookshelves. You have to roll out the red carpet when the writer is an Indian-origin investment banker working for an American bank who wants to make art rather than just purchase it. It's usually a good thing to deconstruct a stereotype, and Chetan Bhagat's debut novel achieves precisely that. It's a narrative about three buddies who bridge the gap between "intellectual overachievers" and regular humans.
Hari, Alok, and Ryan are "five-point someone" attempting to stay afloat in an institution where the average grade is 6.5 on a 10-point scale, despite their evident brilliance in getting into IIT.
In every aspect, Hari, the narrator, is caught between his two best pals. Ryan is a brilliant, creative, affluent, and attractive student whose wealthy parents lavish him with gifts but not enough affection. He stands to gain nothing by inventing schemes to overthrow the wicked grading system that "kills the greatest enjoyable years of your life," not to mention creativity and innovation. Which he has in plenty.
"Fatso" Alok is impoverished, with a paralyzed father, a sister to marry off, and a mother who works long hours at a low-paying job while wiping her tears away with the edge of her sari. Though he previously aspired to be an artist, Alok is now driven by a single goal: to achieve excellent grades in order to obtain a "US scholarship," a decent job, and relief from his family's unrelenting financial hardship.
Needless to say, Alok and Ryan have a falling out, leaving Hari in the midst. The story is packed with all the enjoyable stuff that "muggus" like Venkat forego-vodka, marijuana, sports, ragging, pranks, porn, raging hormones, movies, and love-a mirror to all that is wrong, notably a work ethic that leaves little time for oneself and one's friendships. Real Life, to be precise."Let's face it, girls are stunning. Without them, life is utterly pointless "Hari adds. His paramour, Neha, is the scary Professor Cherian's toe-ring-wearing, ice-cream-slurping, beautiful, artsy, slightly neurotic daughter. Neha's character is a sympathetic representation of what it's like to be young and feminine in an overprotective, patriarchal environment, torn between being a nice girl who desires to do evil things, as many are. Of course, just as Hari earns her confidence (and so loses his virginity), he loses her and finds himself in trouble with her father and the law as a result of one of Ryan's plots.
Expulsion threats and a suicide attempt bring the book to a climax. "GPAs create a good student, not a good person," the story implies, implying that too much judgment, condemnation, and expectation leads to desperate behavior. Although the writing can be abrupt and clunky at times—which could be intended in order to create a narrative of real vernacular speech—it is a well-constructed novel with engaging characters and a compelling plot. On a scale of one to ten, this is definitely a five-star rating.
Is Five Point Someone by Chetan Bhagat a good read?
Five Point is plainly a poor book for somebody, but Bhagat's voices – Hari's voice is very fascinating – and the happy-go-lucky, campus-novel nostalgia (“I may be out of IIT, but in some ways, my spirit is still there,” Hari remarked thoughtfully towards the conclusion) hit enough notes and give it an unmistakable appeal. The messages it communicates are horrible – it is highly unpleasant in its absence of a moral code, and even generous gestures of friendship are frequently random or misled – and there is much in writing. However, it is undoubtedly readable, and even has a rather intriguing plot with all its problems.
The controversy of the five-point someone
However, a few days after the film's premiere, a dispute erupted over Chetan's credit, "Based on the novel Five Point Someone by Chetan Bhagat," which appeared in the closing credits rather than the opening ones. "I was anticipating an opening credit and was pretty startled when I didn't see it," Bhagat said at the time. According to Bhagat, he was told that the film was just 2–5% based on the novel, but after seeing it, he believed it was 70% accurate. He also claimed that the film's producers deceived him, but he clarified that "this has nothing to do with Mr.Aamir Khan; I am a huge fan of Aamir, and he has helped my narrative reach people." The producers, on the other hand, advised him not to read the book, which he did not do.
"We have officially purchased the rights for the picture," Rajkumar Hirani said. We put up a contract with him that makes it clear where his credit stands. He had seen the document with wide eyes, contacted his lawyer, and signed the contract. We agreed in the deal that the title would be revealed in the rolling credits. The font size has not been altered. The title's pace has not been improved. It's precisely where we agreed it would be." Legal records pertaining to Bhagat's relationship with the filmmakers have also been uploaded to the Vinod Chopra Productions website.
