Book review: Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I got back home to Kerala after a few long months and my father presented me with this perfect perfect welcome back. Exit West is one of the first books of Mohsin Hamid that I have read but certainly not the last.

In this beautiful book, he talks about the fate of millions of Nadia's and Saeed's whose seemingly normal lives were shaken by civil war in an unspecified country from where magical doors take them to refugee camps across the globe. The story focuses on how the world and the people in it, matures around these god forsaken times. And while you relax thanking god for having been spared from these casually yet powerfully conveyed perils of fellow humans, he tells you, ".... everyone migrates, even if we stay in the same houses our whole lives, because we can't help it. We are all migrants through time."

It also gets to me how subtly he takes us through the life of the once passionate couple as they grow apart unable to preserve what they had once, to remain unscathed. "In the late afternoon, Saeed went to the top of the hill, and Nadia went to the top of the hill, and there they grazed out over the island, and out to the sea, and he stood beside where she stood and she stood beside where he stood and the wind tugged and pulled at their hair, and they looked around at each other, but they did not see each other, for she went up before him and he went up after her, and they were each at the crest of the hill only briefly, and at different times."

Chillingly casual and hauntingly mundane in the midst of the end of worlds, this book is definitely a goodread. Thank you @thousandsofpages (Mackenzie) for making me want to pick it up.


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Book review: One Indian Girl by Chetan Bhagat

One Indian Girl by Chetan Bhagat
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Picking up a Chetan Bhagat book is like ordering cheap Chinese when you have had too many gourmet meals. It is cheap, quick and it is easy. The book is no different from its predecessors. It is junk. Neither the content, nor the writing leaves you satisfied. But do I have the right to complain? Not really. He never claimed it to be different
from any of his previous books. Plus the book reviews, as usual, were tight slaps across the former banker's face. So, I am solely responsible for the 4 hours spent on this book that left me with nothing. And no doubt it is going to follow suit and be made into a masala Bollywood movie soon. And I am sure a successful one. How could it be not? exotic Punjabi wedding, enough and more drama in 3 iconic cities, and lots of sex! What else would you require?

About the book! Nothing notable except for the extremely hypocritical and unlikeable protagonist, Radhika Mehta. But then again just because the book is about her does not really mean she has to be perfect. The feminist tag attached to the book has attracted a lot of smirks and rightly so when he hasn't even actually taken the effort to understand what the movement really is about before he tried and defined itbon his own terms. Not cool, Mr. Bhagat.

Would I recommend this book to others? Hell, no. Would I read another book of Chetan Bhagat's? why not? It's not like I would've joined the Red Cross and fed the poor in the few hours that it would cost me.


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