The Wanderer

Hello Friends!

I’m doing something new this time, it’ll be a recurring segment on the blog whenever I finish a book I’m reading. This won’t be weekly, I’m not a speed reader by any means, some friends of mine might know that I’ve been reading The Godfather for about 2 months now, but I’ll do a short review anytime I finish a good book. And let me tell you, this is a good book.

5 Point Someone is a tale about 3 underperformers at IIT, India’s best engineering school. Many readers might know this book from the movie it’s loosely based off of, 3 Idiots, one of my favorite movies. While the movie took the main theme of 3 idiots in engineering struggling through classes while trying to enjoy the best years of their lives through wacky adventures and immature romances, the book focuses much more on the soul crushing nature of IIT and the surrounding difficulties of living and working in India.

Hari, the main character, is a down on his luck nerd. He is by his own account an overweight loser who busted his ass to get into IIT and now finds himself near the bottom of the pack. His only company at the bottom of the barrel, his friends Alok, another overweight loser from a poor family, and Ryan, a good looking guy who cares much more about fighting the system than topping his classes. These friends are bonded by their GPAs, measly 5.0s in a 10 point scale, hence the name 5 point someone. Hari, Alok, and Ryan smoke grass, drink vodka, and struggle through their overly difficult classes. While the rest of their class is studying day and night, attending every class with their noses stuffed deep into their books, the gang goes out to movies, eat at restaurants, and spend a great deal of time smoking and drinking on the roof of the engineering building. Hari starts dating a girl who happens to be the dean of engineering’s daughter, which ensues in chaos as those situations normally do. The book is quite fun, and while not exactly the same as my college career, my friends and I got into our fare share of mayhem.

But this story, much like my own college career, is not all fun and games. The stress of school, along with the stress from their own lives, gets to these kids as it does to countless others in similar schools. Alok’s family is extremely poor, his father is paralyzed and half of his mother’s teacher’s salary goes into medical care. Ryan’s family, while well off abroad, left him in boarding schools since age 6, leaving him with a sense of abandonment. And Hari’s childhood left him with a crippling anxiety issue. The Author, Chetan Bhagat, does an amazing job of bringing the reader into the world of IIT, the struggles of these students begin to feel like one’s own.

Throughout the book Ryan talks about how the system is broken, how IIT doesn’t promote creativity, just repetition, how the college hasn’t produced a single new idea in 30 years. I think a lot of colleges in India and even the US are like this, much less now perhaps, but the idea stays the same. The professors only want to see the right answers, regardless if others have merit, and they care about GPA above all. Ryan’s hatred of the system brings his grades, and his friends, further down to the point that graduating seems like a stretch, much less finding a job in the states. As time goes on, and as the grades go lower, the group of friends find that the solution to their troubles is their friendship. That these kids have something much more valuable than what the toppers in IIT have: each other.

This book was fantastic. It was such a fun read, showing the immature care free life of kids with too much responsibility, while also touching on the darker themes of higher education in India. Everyone in India wants to get into IIT, every parent wants their child to attend a great school, and once you get in, you want to succeed. How you deal with that challenge, how you find meaning or passion in your craft, and how the friends you make along the way make it all worth it, is what this book is all about.

Give this book a try, let me know how you liked it! It took me about a week to finish it so it’s a really quick read, but very much worth it. Thanks for reading! I’ll see y’all next time 🙂