Rainbow - Shades of Love (Book Review #2)

Let me start off by saying a big 'Thank You' to Mr. Aman Jassal for asking me to write a review about his debut work and for sending me a signed copy. I haven't blogged anything new in almost a year. Your request through Goodreads asking me to write a review on my blog was unexpected and I was reminded of something that I  love to do, but slowly, over time forgot about. Thanks again for the motivation.Now lets get to the review part.

Rainbow- Shades of Love by Aman Jassal.
This is the author's first book and is published  by Teenage Publishers priced at 150 rupees .The synopsis of the novel is as follows :
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This is not a book to teach you about love or how to get a beautiful girl to bed, rather it reveals how bad things can get if you don't set your priorities right. It's a story about the most explored life aspect ' Love' 'Sex'.

YUVI, a pleasure seeking boy, falls victim to the same notorious life facet called love. Simran's beauty sweeps him off from his feet and he leaves no stone unturned to seek her special attention.As he falls in love, he also sleeps around with all the erroneous girls, and when his fate threatens to take his love down, he promises himself to stop all of this and come out of the wreckage … But then, his past deeds come back to his present, and that tears his life apart. 

What follows is an uneasy course of getting his love back on board.The story reveals the life of today's youth, their friendships, feelings, priorities, and ineptitude to handle relationships while not forgetting their turmoil between the two critical facets of life: LOVE & SEX.

Love makes the world go round … Or is it Sex? Based on real life experiences and tea time gossips. _________________________________________________________________________________ 

Too much details for a synopsis if you ask me. Could have trimmed it a bit and left out some details like his life getting torn apart. As written in the synopsis the main characters are Yuvi and the love of his life Simran, who happens to live right across his PG and by sheer coincidence also happens to be so damn beautiful. (What an opportunity!! The universe seems to plotting for you Mr.Yuvi). Its narrated as a flashback. Yuvi  is an experienced Casanova kinda guy. He is well versed in the various techniques to get ladies. But for the first time, he feels something different, an he falls for this girl, Simran. He lies to her from the very beginning and doesn't come clean at all. The lies keep on piling like back-papers in B.Tech.

Amidst this he has the nerve to sleep with two other women and cheat on Simran. The author has tried to imply that Yuvi succumbed to the advances of the other two women rather than acting on his own accord, but thats not how I felt while reading. Its not that he forgot about Simran before jumping into bed with them, rather he remembered his love for her on both occasions before nailing the coffin shut on his relationship. How appalling! And we are supposed to feel sorry for such a guy? Sheesh!! Give me a break!

Things go south with Simran (as expected) and he finds himself in a crisis. The characters in this novel are kind of hollow. They dont leave a lasting impression on our minds, especially Simran. She is boring, annoying and to put it plainly I didn't like her at all.  To me it felt like just another story, with all the familiar recipes found in today's Indian books - hero, heroine, friends, love, trust, betrayal , blah, blah ...blah!! There is little or no character development.

The story is simple and doesn't go in to explore the theme which is, to quote the author : "...the most explored life aspect 'Love' 'Sex'." One other thing that I found amiss was the title. It says rainbow and shades of love, but the story doesn't do justice to the title, or rather should I say the title doesn't do justice to the story? I am confused. I read the book, but that's just it, it's bland and feels somewhat hastily written.

However, considering that this is Aman's first book, I commend and congratulate him on the effort. Everyone has to start off somewhere. I hope to see more works of his and better ones at that. All the best.

My rating :

The Sea, the Lake and a whole lot of memories........

So I came back home after two months in Mysore. And as always I visited my grandmother. However, first i went to the lake. And by 'Lake' I mean Ashtamudi Lake and more specifically, the piece of this lake which is near my grandfather's house. He passed away recently and I haven't been there since. Here the lake sweeps into the land in such a way that a small circular portion of it lies touching the road leading to the house.Its pretty shallow and calm in this area. Anyway, as I walking towards the house from the opposite shore, my head was filled with images. Random scenes started flashing through my mind. I used to stay here every year during my summer vacations for the annual feast of St.George which is held at our church. The gates were locked with a chain. I grabbed the bars of the old iron gate and stared into the compound through the bars. There I saw the house standing silent. Even the trees seemed to be in mourning. Dead leaves littered all over the ground. Only weeds seem to thrive here. Somehow I felt that the place was emanating sadness and despair. They say that home is where your heart is. If that's the case then a part of my heart lies here and I see myself justified if I call this my home.

I remembered my grandpa. They say that a man's worth is measured by the number of people who attend his funeral. He was a great man. And i say this not because of the multitude that was present for his funeral. I'll call him great because he fits the definition of greatness. A man can achieve only so much in a lifetime. My thoughts ran back in time to the days i spent there with Joe n' Ryan, Isabel, Ria and Annie and Anne. Isabel, Joe and the others were the late comers, they always showed up in the middle of the vacation.We used to get together for the summer vacations and did whatever kids used to do for vacations. We played and fought. We tried to do a bit fishing but soon learned that its not as easy as you see in the movies and comics. We ate mangoes, lots of it. Jack-fruit was another common item. I was the oldest among the group so I used to go for long walks to the north of our house along the lakeside. Skipping stones was another pastime. It was like a ritual that was to be performed twice a day , in the morning and in the evening, without fail. It was because they were staying outside Kerala. We used to go for early morning walks with grandpa. Along the way he would stop and talk with everyone and they all had time for him. As a kid I was always amazed how he knew so much people. Years later on a sad October morning I knew the answer to that. Its not that he knew them all, it was the other way around. They all knew him.

Slowly but surely the sun was going down. The watch is over. There's only melancholy here..

The next day I went to Tanagasseri Beach and the breakwaters. My  favourite spot in the whole world. Just sat and stared at the sea. You'll never know how time flies. The sound of the waves breaking on the rocks have a rather hypnotic effect on you. There are people fishing here. Some are here for the view, others for exercise and I for the memories. I sat and saw the sun go down. After a minute or two the skies were painted in brilliant pink and in the dying hours of the day, I captured this on my camera. It's time to leave. My short vacation is almost over. Mysore and my work beckons...

Till we meet again...

(Originally written on March 2014)