By Prashant Shrivastava. Grade D.
‘Life’s Like That’ is set in the beautiful city of Udaipur. However, is that enough to salvage a story that hardly cares to have a meaningful plot? The cover is neat, enticing you to go through the blurb, which again showcases this book as a tale of friendship, jealousy, love and betrayal. I don’t know how much a reader could relate with the first three emotions. However, when it comes to betrayal, I truly felt thus after reading this book. Why, just why couldn’t the author devote more time, and effort, which in turn would have benefitted this story a great deal?
Set in the beautiful city of Udaipur, this love story is filled with everything, jealousy, one sided love and betrayal. Amit gets approval of Preeti, his love and Ishita, who unknowingly helped Amit gets involved with Sankalp. The story moves on with ups and down of college life.
Life’s Like That
A nicely flowing story takes turn when opulent guy Shekar comes into the picture who is not only rich but intelligent. Unlike fairy tales, the love starts to take a backseat and money takes the charge.
Do dreams shatter when they meet the harsh reality? can waves of love survive having hit by the shore of wealth? can love still be based on fairy tales where money can not distract?
Remember its money that is running the world, love is only a art of life. So what wins and what should win?
Amit and Preeti are the protagonists of this story. They fall in love with each other, make love, and believe their love to be true and divine. Sankalp and Ishita are their friends, and as expected, they too fall in love, get cozy, and behave like crazy love-birds. As if that was not enough, another pair, Rahul and Niharika, enter the frame. Again, they make love, and promise to hold their affection for each other in high esteem.
Thankfully, there isn’t any fourth couple.
There have been stories on friendship and love, innumerable, which managed to hit the right chords with the readers. Nurturing an idea is fine, but come on, you need to execute that too. As a writer, it is your responsibility to present your thoughts to the world in the best possible manner. The story should have the power of perfect communication, interacting with the readers and capturing their attention.
However, all these factors are lacking in this story. The reasons are aplenty. Firstly, the plot is outdated, which doesn’t offer much to the readers. There are way better stories on campus lives that have found favour in the literary circle, and this book simply doesn’t stand a chance among them. Secondly, the flow is predictable, and you don’t get anything new in subsequent chapters. It’s the same old repetitions of love making, betrayal, campus placements, worries, and exam – trauma, albeit with different characters. Before you turn the pages, you already know what is going to come next, and you lose interest midway. Thirdly, and the most important reason – Grammar.
Here I pose a simple question – where are the editors? It’s not the first time that I came across a book with lots and lots of basic grammatical errors, and I am sure this won’t be the last. Lack of inverted commas was one big headache, and I had to keep guessing as to who said what whenever a conversation took place. I had to place imaginary punctuation marks at the right places, my mind analysing the contents, and adapting to the missing links. Now, if a reader has to rectify the flaws in a book, what role do the author, editor and publisher play?
I am, however, glad that the author didn’t resort to any Hindi sentences, as have been the case in recent times with several novels penned down by newcomers. Alas, only if the author and the publishing team had paid more attention in perfecting the flaws, the verdict would have been quite different.
Nevertheless, I wish the author all the best for his future endeavours. Writing a novel isn’t just an achievement, it’s also a responsibility. It’s high time the authors of tomorrow realized that.