Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

IIT sells!

`An IITian's love story'. Does that spell contradiction between IITians and love, or a spirit of comradeship between IITians? "Well, IIT sells, you can call it a marketing gimmick," jokes Tushar Raheja, author of "Anything for you Ma'am - An IITian's Love Story".

At the book reading session hosted by the Oxford Bookstore this week, the young IITian author read out a comical episode from his freshly released book. The book is a fictional account of the author's life as a student on the IIT campus and the resultant travails of his love life. The passage Tushar read out dealt with a situation where Tejas, the lovelorn protagonist, contemplates concocting a false medical certificate to validate his broken foot, which actually is not broken. This in turn calls for finding an unscrupulous doctor. "The book deals with many such humorous situations where the character has to work himself out of it," explained the author.

Speaking on the occasion, Meera Ramchandran, Principal of Gargi College, stated that one of the reasons she enjoyed the book was the spirit of camaraderie that reminded her of her college days. "College days are the last chance to experience this sort of companionship between friends. After that, it is each man for himself," she added. She also credited Tushar, a self- acknowledged disciple of P.G. Woodhouse of crafting an Indianised version of it.

She also appreciated the author's attempt to catch Indian inflexions of the English language, giving an example of the oft-repeated phrase `See brother' as a take-off from the Hindi `Dekho bhai'. However, she expressed her disappointment over Tushar's not portraying even a single woman in IIT. "As a woman I was eager to know how a young man would portray women. I hope Tushar does so in future," she said.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail