Picking up Three Mistakes... is a big mistake

POOR SHOW: The hype over author Chetan Bhagat does not make Three Mistakes.. a good read.

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Keywords: Chetan Bhagat, Three Mistakes Of My Life

Mumbai: After Five Point Someone and One Night @ a Call Center, Chetan Bhagat is back with a bang, once again. His third book, Three Mistakes of My Life, is out on the stands.

It is like a Bollywood masala film which has romance, action, drama, tragedy, all packed in one. And since the author Chetan Bhagat is well-hyped and the book is smartly priced, no doubt the publishers will sell a lot of copies. But is it a good read?

The book starts in dramatic way as Bhagat receives an email from Govind, the protagonist of the book, who feels he has reached a dead-end in his life and hence has consumed many sleeping pills. Bhagat tracks him down, flies down to Gujarat and then starts the story of the three mistakes in Govind’s life.

The story focusses on the life of three friends as they turn entrepreneurs. Govind is business-orientated, Ishan sleeps and breathes only cricket, and Omi is ready to join his friends for almost everything they are game for. So after wasting enough time, in their lives they reach the stage where they have to have a goal, a lakshya. A solution that works for all three of them is to start a sports shop.

In the course of running a business, their lives take dramatic turns. And of course there are plots and sub-plots going side by side, one of them is Govind’s love affair with Vidya, his best friend Ish's sister.

Now everything is fine with friendship, love and business, but like wind in an open desert, Bhagat’s story goes all over the place after this.

Since its Gujarat, he wants to include references to the Bhuj earthquake and also the Godhra riots with the three friends being a part of all the tragic events. Now is this his last book that he decided to include everything that came to his mind? Could he not keep some of it for his next book? Too many twists and turns in one book took my mind away from it.

Now with all the tragedy and unfortunate events in their lives, and with a lot of blood and death over religion and politics the story reaches its end – Ishan finds out about his sister Vidya and his best friend Govind’s love affair that was on behind his back, for which he will never forgive the two. And thus Govind takes sleeping pills and decides to write to Chetan Bhagat, of all the people in the world!

It is being nice and lenient to give Three Mistakes of My Life a rating of two stars out of five. One mistake was to pick up this book the other one was to read it, but the third one – of recommending this book – won’t be perpetrated.