I was a Five Point someone, for people who have not read this book the name comes from the I.I.T. scoring system and 5 point scores are people who have just cleared the bar, read average students with nothing that endears them to the teaching fraternity. When I was in college, the day started with coffee, smokes, and fights for new papers, arguments for the men’s room, a roommate walking off wearing your only pair of ironed clothes and me trying to decide whether or not to visit the first lecture. I had friends (Boy did I have friends, everyone was a friend and this way I had some friend or the other to spend time with at any time of the day).
Some time later, some struggles later I find myself sitting in my office and now that I think, how did I ever make it this far ? To be honest I don’t have an answer but then I feel glad I made it.
COLLEGE: This was what college meant for me: Bikes to ride, women to stare at, classes to miss, places to go. We never had the energy to stand in line to pay the exam fee and more often than not ended up paying it with a fine for late payment, but we did have the patience of waiting for three hours outside the movie theatre just so that we can catch a movie First Day First Show (it was a prestige issue). We never went to the mess hall where fresh and well cooked food was available (our cafeteria in college was very good) but we very always ready to ride outside the city to one of those highway side Pappe De Dhabbas. Our clothes resembled faded and ragged floor swipes, we shaved our beards once a fortnight (because we wanted that Satya’s Kallu Mama look and we believed it was cool). Pink Floyd, Ozzy, Metallica, Iron Maiden and the others where surrounding us... they where in our music, they where on our T-Shirts, they where on our walls.
We slept at 3 in morning and woke up at 9, the whole day was spent in trying to avoid professors and still getting the notes for the class, then we spent time and money photocopying some one else’s assignments and submitting them as ours. Most of my friends had girls to chase and I was busy helping them out. We used to get into trouble with cops for over speeding and riding without proper documentation and some times there was a shortage of cash and it was time to borrow money. The end of the month mostly was jumping walls in the darkness to flick a bottle of gas from a neighbor’s bike and walking to the nearby bakery to take some smokes on credit. And oh vodka, grass and all these things that made us feel cool where parts of our life. (You definitely feel it an in thing to do mad and wrong things when in college, its an impulse that starts it and it is also an impulse that ends it)
I guess it is only this small phase of most peoples life when you have so much freedom and don’t know what to do with that, and you most definitely do end up doing all kinds of weird things that after a few years make you think, man was I rotten to the core. But then what’s life without experiencing the ups and downs???? I still meet my friends, most of them have completely given up smoking and drinking, they are now busy like me between their families and work. A few are married and a few like me are bachelors about to take the step. Whatever we believed was cool, now feels odd, it only means that our priorities have changed and so have our attitudes. Me for example, a guy famous for walking around college in jeans which where cut to below the knee length and was always hounded by college security for pulling wheelies on the college roads (In fact I was the one guy in the 21 year history of my college who rode a bike straight through the ground floor corridor and lobby, down the entry ramp and the stopped, pulled a wheelie in front of an irate guard and then shot away into what I believed was glory) I feel laughing at my own childish stunts.
Now that I have given you an insight into my own college life, lets go to the main reason why I am writing this........ Five Point Someone by Chetan Bhagat. It is that book takes all that is mentioned above and brings out the lives of three friends in the I.I.T. Well I.I.T., I.I.M. or the local college, the stories are the same just the characters different and a few years latter you sit and think, then smile about your erstwhile life and some where down the line as a parent you worry that your children will go that way, a few you will permit because you personally had done something in your college life and a few, I agree are beyond the red line and need control. Well read the book and go back a bit in time to your own college life and smile...... That’s what the book is for