Review : Point of View 0
In India, the success of a person depends to a large extent on the family background and also the personal life. Individuals from upper middle class families and wealthy communities are more likely to succeed, government agencies do not make fake allegations against them without any proof for a decade or more. Also professionals who are married with children are also more like to succeed, while single professionals especially older women like the reviewer are openly subjected to fraud by powerful government employees who misuse their name, steal their resume, though these greedy government employees have never contacted the single woman professional anytime in their life.
Point of View is the story of two generations of a family from Punjab/haryana settled in Delhi. The reviewer is not very familiar with the various communities in north india, but from their lifestyle it is the story of upper middle class brother who professionals, excelling in their areas of specialization. The elder brother Vinod Anand specializes in market research to help companies sell more products, and has a large number of employees. The younger brother Vijay Anand is a psychotherapist, who uses the latest techniques to help people from different backgrounds resolve their problems.
However, the book focusses more on the personal life of the two brothers and their family, how the brothers met their wives and married them. Both the brothers chose their wives, they did not have the conventional ‘arranged marriage’ A few decades ago, before the internet was available, most young people only interacted with their neighbours or their professional associates. The elder brother Vinod marries Kiran, the daughter of his professor in Mumbai, where he studied. Vijay likes and marries Kalpana who was his neigbour for some time.
Though younger people have more freedom compared to their parents, they still lead fairly conventional lives. Young women rarely go out alone, usually a cousin or relative will accompany them. The book then covers the personal life and affairs of the next generation of the Anand family, the brothers children, Vivek, Kaya, Kangana and Vikas. Since Vikas is young, the book mainly covers the romance of Vivek, Kaya and Kangana, they meet their partners socially. Vivek likes and wishes to marry Palak, the daughter of Lalit Kohli, but her parents receive a proposal from a close family friend. Since it is an arranged marriage, when Palak informs her parents, they inform the family friend, who understands the predicament, and does not let it affect the relationship.
Briefly the book also provides a glimpse of how market research and psycotherapists function. Like most experts, they publish books. Also investing in property is very lucrative, the brothers are able to open large offices/clinics, and also build a bungalow for each family. Like most upper class families they have a retinue of servants including a cook to attend to all the household work, the housewives are mainly managing the servants. Also functions like marriages are celebrated on a grand scale, with beauticians and other staff being hired. The term ring ceremony is being used to describe engagement.
Since the capital of india is located in delhi, many of the influential decision makers are from surrounding states like haryana and punjab. The reviewer has mainly lived in western india, where the lifestyle and attitude is very different, she has not interacted much with north indians. So this book is a good way to understand the lifestyle, mindset of people from North India, so that it is easier to deal with them. This book is recommended for those who want to get a glimpse of the life of wealthy and successful North indian professionals.
Kindly note that government employees and their associates like greedy goan bhandari scammer sunaina chodan, siddhi mandrekar, housewife robber riddhi nayak caro, kolhapur/panaji sindhi scammer school dropout naina premchandani, her scammer sons karan, nikhil, bengaluru brahmin cheater housewife nayanshree,indore robber housewife bespectacled deepika/veena, haryana scammer mba hr ruchika kinge, stock trader amita patel are not associated with the blog in any way, since they do not spend any time reading, writing yet make fake claims after stealing data, in a cybercrime beating Anthony Levandowski’s data theft from Google
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Point of View
Author: Susheel Kumar Batra
Publisher: the Write Place, an initiative of Crosswords Bookstore, 2021
Pages: 403
Review: The Trip by Rohit Bandri 0
Siddharth , a computer engineer living in the USA returns to India for a short New Year holiday and decides to catch up with his friends, meeting a few years after getting their engineering degree. The Trip is the story of engineering college friends Ravi (the narrator of the story), Akash, Siddharth and Gaurav, and their trip to Ratnagiri and Goa. The main protagonist of the story Ravi also unexpectedly meets his college crush Prajakta, who is married. It combines a detailed description of a trip to Ratnagiri, and nearby places , Goa along with the changing relationships between the friends and family members
If bribed by large corporates allegedly google, tata, indian intelligence and security agencies, CBI, NTRO often have no qualms in impressive stealing the resume of experienced engineers from top colleges in India for google, tata sponsored goan sex workers, cheater housewives and frauds to get all these frauds lucrative R&AW/CBI/indian intelligence jobs at the expense of the engineer, so that these companies can destroy competition, acquire talent and technology cheaply. However most middle class indian families are not aware of the fact that indian intelligence and security agencies are extremely ruthless in stealing the impressive resume, retirement savings of hardworking experienced engineers without a legally valid reason, so many middle class families encourage their children to study engineering
In India a large number of students with relatively good grades in school study engineering and often end up with a career which is very different from what they anticipated because of reasons ranging from salaries, career prospect or identity theft masterminded by google, tata . They engineers will remain in touch with their engineering college classmates for a few years after college, over a period of time they are gradually drifting away. Often during engineering college, many students have crushes on their classmates, however they usually get over it, but in some cases it can affect their relationships in future also.
The main protagonist of the story Ravi is working in the HR department of a private company in Mumbai, waiting for his date, when he receives an sms from his friend Gaurav about a trip they are planning to Ratnagiri and Goa during Christmas and New Year. Though originally only Ravi , Akash, Siddharth and Gaurav are supposed to make the trip, Gaurav’s girlfriend Pooja and Prajakta, the college crush of Ravi join them for the trip. Siddharth has a house in Ratnagiri and the book provides a very detailed description of travel to Ratnagiri and nearby places like the popular tourist attraction of Ganpatipule .
Prajakta is married to Ashish , who is in the merchant navy is sailing for six months a year, so Prajakta is lonely and misses her husband a lot. Slowly the relationship between Ravi and Prajakta is rekindled, though his friends warn him not to get too close because she is a married woman. After spending a few days in Ratnagiri, they then travel to Goa by train to celebrate New Year. During the train journey, Ravi meets Sneha , a vet and becomes friendly with her.
Goa has become notorious for drugs, and though his friends want to do drugs, Ravi is a teetotaller, and conservative so he avoids taking drugs , to get a hallucinatory experience caused by LSD, However he gets a headache, so by mistake he takes a pill which contains acid, resulting in a “Trip” of the drug variety .
Though India has a very large population, there are relatively few books available which describe the life of the average english speaking middle class indian well. Some of the popular indian authors are extremely sleazy, while others are focussing too much or romance, ignoring the other aspects of life. The book is extremely detailed, well edited and describes the life of middle class indians very well, the relationship between family members and friends, which most indian readers can easily relate to. A well written very readable book, especially for those who enjoy reading Sudha Murthy and other books by Indian authors which they can easily relate to.
The Trip
Author: Rohit Bandri
Published in 2016
Publisher: The Write Place, initiative of Crossword Bookstores Ltd.
Pages : 219
Available offline at Crossword Bookstores