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Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Nothing for you My Dear- Still I Love You

Ever heard the saying: "Never judge a book by its cover". Trust me guys its true. Last week I went to Landmark just to browse through the new collections and best sellers. With the valentines season round the corner it seemed like the town is painted in Red. Starting from flowers to books, cards to gifts, malls to roadside stalls. Everyone seems to be in the red mood :P. While browsing under the bestsellers section, a book with red cover with a couple on a bench caught my attention. It was a book by a debutante Arpit Dugar and the book I’m referring is “Nothing for you My Dear- Still I Love You”. The cover was interesting and the jist at the last page sounded something light-hearted romcom. Since the price was just 90/- I picked it. I was expecting something on the lines of Two States by Chetan Bhagat. Like a young kid who is excited to see new books at the beginning of the academic year, I was also excited to start off with the book. But alas the excitement vanished in just few pages. Firstly coming to the plot. The book has nothing new to offer. The same college life and similar issues, lack in captivating the reader. The main protagonist (Avi) is asked to meet a prospective girl for marriage. Avi tells her that he is not interested but when the girl insists on knowing the reason, Avi explains in the form of 185-page book. One thing I am not able to understand why on earth would someone share with an unknown girl his/her 24 years of life? I failed to connect with the author on that. I mean any sane person would tell that he/she has someone else in their life but definitely not narrate their biography as a reason for not marrying. Secondly, within first few pages, the reader would get a bad feeling; that the book was never edited. Seems like the manuscript was printed directly. With so many spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and incorrect sentence structures the book is a big disappointment. The author wrote his own story and named his character as Avinash, but at places he got it mixed with his real name-Arpit, which doesn’t sound good. Also the name of his friend “Nitin” has been spelled incorrectly as “Ntini” at many places, which definitely means the editor gladly slipped reading the content. Smart guy I'd say!! Lastly, in the end the author tried to get an element of twist, which was not handled well. Seems like author was bored of the book himself. He wrapped up the ending in 5 or 10 lines. Before the reader could realize what happened, the book ends abruptly. Though I have finished the book in two sittings, it’s been a great disappointment. At the end I could feel only one thing paisa bolta hai. If you have the moolah, you can get any damn stuff published and make readers pay for your $***. So to conclude, NEVER read it and thumbs down for Arpit Dugar's first attempt.