Days, Weeks, Months, Years, Decades and Centuries; nobody knows how old the phenomenon of love truly is. We keep on hearing, watching and feeling different love stories but do we ever get bored? The answer is ‘No’ because every love story has something different to offer.
As the Valentine’s Day was around the corner, I decided to read a romantic novel. I explored through many known names and lucrative titles but somehow I decided upon a new novel written by a relatively unknown author, Chandan Sharma.
I must say the thing which attracted me towards this novel was the cover. A red heart with the pictures of 3 characters looked compelling. It looked like a dark love story and lesser price, which were good enough reason for me to buy this novel and guess what; I was not disappointed at all.
Story starts and ends with its main character, Manav. As author introduces him- He is a 25 year old flamboyant guy who works with a BPO. He is selfish and finds himself full of overconfidence. He has a girlfriend but, like most of the young guys, he thinks of being the next Casanova. The story revolves around 4 characters(Manav. Nikita, Sambhavi and Rajesh) and it is a good thing because often when a story has too many characters, it becomes confusing.
This novels starts in a call centre and at the beginning it looks as if it is a humorous novel not romantic. But the story changes when Nikita enters the life of Manav who is already engaged with Sambhavi. Rajesh on the other hand continues his comic character. Soon it seems that we are watching a novel. The story is very fast and apart from the place where Nikita and Manav search for a house on rent, the whole story is brisk. A small excerpt from story which I have personally experienced:
“The poor guys who are chosen to call the people lurking around think that they have already become one of the favourites of the person who is sending the message across. They think that they have an upper hand on the others just because they have been ‘preferred’ to call upon the other people. They perhaps don’t know that in government jobs peons are entitled to it.”
It seems at first that novel is based upon a triangular love story but as soon as the story heads towards it, an unexpected twist changes whole story. Romance becomes very intense and humour evaporates from the story. Manav finds himself embroiled in emotions and love. Suddenly incidents like suicides, attempts to suicide and death changes the whole story and makes it nail-biting read. A small excerpt from story:
“I tightened my fist and punched the wall. A wave of pain travelled from my hand to the neurons and a narrow line of blood again came out of my hand onto the wall. Soon my anger again sank into the grief and distress. I could not believe that I had actually lost a selfless love… forever.”
The best part of the story comes at the end. The climax of the story is intriguing and I would say that ending is not happy neither sad.
Although the story is a bit slower in a chapter or two when compared to whole book but trust me, this novel cannot be missed.
Hats off to CHANDAN SHARMA for describing call centre life so efficiently. I would recommend to the people who have ever worked in a BPO or call centre Or an MNC. Also the people who wants to read something new and fresh.