I'm not twenty four.. Sachin Garg

Yet one more novel from yet one more Engineer-MBA - "one who quit his boring day job to start his own venture- Grapevine Publishing".

The story revolves around the trials and tribulations of a young MBA graduate, in her first job. A Delhi bred girl, Saumya Kapoor is thrilled to land a job through campus placements, in Lala Steels who is a much favoured employer. A couple of weeks later, she is equally stunned and dismayed to learn that because of her unisexual name, she has been posted to their steel plant in a remote village in North Karnataka. Gone are her dreams of sexy skirts and stillettoes, of office romances with handsome colleagues, and of splurging her salary. Instead, she has boring, shapeless uniforms, and unattractive co-workers who seem to have never seen a girl at close quarters.

Amit, her classmate from business school and Malappa are 2 other new joinees who are assigned to Training and Development, and the Blast Furnace, respectively. Saumya is posted to the HR Department where she is part of the Safety team and her job entails informing the family members of the employees who had been involved in an accident at the plant. Hers is the unpleasant and painful task of informing wives that they were widows, daughters that they were orphans and mothers that they’d lost their offspring.

Having witnessed tragic accidents in her first week itself, Saumya is totally disillusioned with her job. Her first instinct is to quit, but later, she decides to stay on and prove herself. But then in a horrific incident, after an altercation with his boss, Malappa gets thrown into the Blast Furnace and Saumya can’t take any more. She puts in her papers. While serving her 3 month notice period, Shubro comes back into her life.

Saumya had first met Shubrodeep Shyamchaudhary during her induction period, at a restaurant on a trip to Hampi. An MBA in Finance, he had turned down a hot-shot job in Standard Chartered Bank, and perfected the art of Moving On… By his own admission, he’d turned into a hippie, who’d stay for just 90 days in a place before moving on in search of new environments and people and experiences. He’d traversed the length and breadth of the world in the course of his travels. The day after Saumya resigned from Lala Steel, Shubro was found within the premises iof a residential complex, in a senseless condition, with a piece of paper bearing Saumya’s name in his hands.

Saumya finds him a job with the Social Service Dept in Lala Steel.
Slowly but surely, she falls in love with Shubro, as the days pass and new facets of his character unveil themselves. But, when 90 days are over, will Shubro move on and away from Saumya? What is the reason behind his becoming a rolling stone? Answers to these questions are found in the rest of the story.



This review is posted as part of the Book Reviews program by BlogAdda. Am GLAD I didn't buy the book. I was totally put off by the errors. It strives to be chick lit, but fails.

The storyline is too superficial. Events happens too soon, the characters are not developed enough. You just have to take Sachin's word for it that his characters are whatever. His writing does not lead you to form your own judgement of them.
In his acknowledgements, Sachin Garg thanks a couple of people who "continue to prove that MBA doesn't devoid you of your last traces of creativity"…..
Creativity might be ok, but this MBA's handling of English language and grammar sadly leaves much to be desired. Spelling errors, punctuation errors, grammatical errors, sheer carelessness in handling the language…Grapevine Publishing needs a good editor, period.  Hopefully Sachin Garg will get that editor in place before starting his next novel. Then, the reader might, just MIGHT enjoy his literary outpourings..

Dear reader, in case you still feel like reading this, my copy says its Rs. 100/- but you can get it in 2-3 working days on Flipkart, for Rs. 65/-