Last December, on my way to Knoxville from Fort Lauderdale, I had to pass through Downtown Atlanta. I was firm on not making a stop there. Alas, when I saw the Sign for Exit 249D on I-75, it seemed like it was shouting at me. The big white letters in green fluorescent color were quite unbearable – ‘Georgia Tech’. I spent key period of my life there. The institute which takes away most of the credit for what I have been able to achieve in last 5 years in US.
My mom was with me then. I had been driving for almost 12 hours with barely few breaks to get food for our and my car’s stomachs. So, when mom saw my facial expression while reading that exit sign, she said its okay if we took a break there. Sigh. I could not remain firm any longer. Took the exit and turned left on North Avenue, the street on which Georgia Tech is located.
Then started my tales, which mom patiently heard. ‘This is the apartment where I used to live.’ ‘Mom, look, that is the stadium where we stood all night long to get some free tickets for a football game.’ ‘Mom, this where I was interviewed for my current job’. ‘This is where I got into an accident and I had to wait for almost 7 hours in that Piedmont Hospital’s emergency room before they stitched my lip’… and it continued unabated for half an hour. At the end, when we really had to leave, I was very emotional. Almost as much as I was when I left Georgia Tech forever in that fateful January of 2002.
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Now what does the above random ramblings have to do with Five Point Someone, you may ask. Well, this is what the book is all about. Three IITians and their tales. Some nerve wrecking, some emotional, some hilarious, some intriguing incidences cobbled together in a book which is a product of a promise made by a friend to his fellow mate. Alok’s attempt to commit suicide and Hari’s promise in the ambulance, that if Alok is saved and recovers, he shall write a book on all their crazy days, precipitated this book. For once I became selfish. I was kind of glad that Alok attempted suicide otherwise probably we would have been deprived of this fantastic piece of work.
This review is dedicated to my friend Raj (nikamma1112), who strongly recommended this book to me, as much that I had to make my dad purchase one in India and ship to US. A lot of effort went in the process, as the book was sold out at Crosswords in Ahmedabad (shows its popularity even about year after its publication). I had to patiently wait for about 2 months. But anyway, the book finally arrived on time right before I embarked on a rather longish journey to Nashville. So it was a perfect way to spend 6 hours of boring flight time.
Five Point Someone is essentially a story of three friends, Hari, Alok and Ryan who met and became friends in rather odd circumstances. They instantly bond with each other and then starts their roller coaster ride through one of the toughest and most prestigious technical institutes in the world. All three have contrasting personalities. Alok and Hari have definite goals in life, or if I rephrase, they know what their ambition is and what they ultimately want to do. Whereas, Hari seems to be confused. He wants to be Ryan so he finds it hard to disagree with him. He is madly in love with HOD’s daughter (HOD=Head of the Department).
Ryan and Alok are completely different personalities. One comes from a destitute family and other has affluent parents. One’s ambition is to graduate with better GPA to lend a decent job so that he can marry his sister and take care of his family’s money problems, other doesn’t give a damn about the GPA and the IIT system and wants to be a researcher. And Ryan comes up with ‘Mice Theory’ to which they all have to agree. They do not want to be book warms or in other words geeks. So they end up in the bottom sphere of IITians with some 5 point GPA. Hence the name Five Point Someone.
The book is a nearly genuine portrayal of campus and/or hostel life. Neither once in the book do you feel like reading a fiction. Some may find the ‘Operation Pendulum’ a piece of fiction or exaggeration but the fact that how desperate Hari was to score an A in the subject taught by Prof. Cherian, father of his girlfriend Neha and how Ryan loved to play with the system, they could do anything. And they in fact did. Some may find this part of the book a bit over stretched, but I think this is the high point, turning point in the book. And how can I forget that this Operation resulted in Alok’s attempted suicide, Hari’s commitment to write a book and then this book!
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So what is so great about this book? Actually the incident I penned in the introduction of this review is one of the many such nostalgic instances that the book took me to. It was a trip down the memory lane, a nostalgic trip. All of us here who have enjoyed the four years of campus / hostel life would find it hard to dislike this book.
If you notice the thought patterns you go through while reading the book, you would realize that you find yourself somewhere in the story. ‘Hey I used to do the same.’ ‘Hey remember that HOD Prof. H. M Trivedi? Professor Cherian reminds me of him. All these professors are same.’ ‘Gosh, remember that guy Snehal, he was such a geek, he was just like this Venkat.’ And it continues endlessly.
So, where do I see myself in there? Honestly, I used to be a geek in the early days of my Masters at Georgia Tech. I scored a perfect 4.0/4.0 GPA in first semester. Then there was a roommate say Ryan who made me realize that there is more in life than just GPA. But like Alok, I had a family back in India which was going through some traumatic financial and social problems and my ultimate aim was to manage a decent job and take care of my family’s needs. Whereas Ryan in our home came from an affluent family. So he could never understand my situation and I could rarely understand his. But we met somewhere in the middle.
Ultimately, by the time I graduated my GPA had slid from 4.0 to 3.65, but hey who’s complaining! Even 3.65 is a very decent GPA by Georgia Tech’s standards (let me brag a little, Georgia Tech is the third best engineering institute in USA with annual research funding of almost 300 million dollars). Now we all are separated but whenever I go back to Atlanta, I never forget to go back to my old apartment, those classes, those labs, those pool tables, those food courts, those libraries, just to savor some golden memories that I have left behind. This book took me back 4 years and probably first time in three years, my eyes were wet when I completed this book.