When successful people write books, they will usually have a happy ending. Usually people start writing when they have lost all other avenues to feed their ego. Not surprisingly, they write about lost opportunities, failures, and the end is where everything culminates in disaster.

In five point some one; what not to do at IIT! Chetan Bhagat tells the story of losers who gain in the end and there is a happy note ringing throughout the novel. If a loser is writing the story the pain will be more visible because he is writhing in the pain and writes to get through it.

This novel could be a criticism of the IIT system. But it is more a story of three adolescents coping with the transition into adults. All of them were denied normal childhoods due to some reason or the other.

That appears to be one flaw as the author appears to cite their troubled childhoods as the reason for their rebellion against the system. They could have been portrayed as perfectly normal and yet they could have done the things they did such as smoking grass, drinking vodka and cheating the system. It appears the author wants to tell that growing up in a normal family means conforming and that means they will become Venkats (the topper in IIT, who was a master mugger with no social contacts) who live solely for themselves and do not contribute anything to the society.

The story is told through the eyes of Hari, an average guy, who wants to be like Ryan - handsome, always correct and brave. Ryan, Alok and Neha are given slots to express themselves and it is through them that we get alternate angles of Hari's personality and realises that he had the most problematic childhood of the three protagonists and why he could never answer professors' questions.

Other than the usual stuff in college stories, like drinking, professors, ragging and life in general, the most original part in the novel is Hari's love story. I bet that had the author's love affair, which I presume is a success, had been a failure, it would have been one of the best tales of love ever written. For success in love dampens it and people tend to value it less. Even then, Chetan Bhagat has coloured it exquisitely, and from the first moment of Hari's meeting with Neha when he bumps against her car, he has balanced the delicate link between the flesh and the soul in love.

The author has described with honesty the selfishness of lovers who use everything including dead relatives to meet their love. And he has drawn the picture of the female psyche which tries to balance the equation between the father and the lover. Hari is often intrigued by the limits set by Neha and wonders about the girl psyche and the perennial difference between man and woman.

Ryan provides the answer for him, she too wants to do all that but a bit less than you want. Neha wonders in the slot provided to her by the author if Hari too is like all boys who only wants to get physical. On top of the insti building, Ryan tells Neha, 'Every man has needs. And pretty girls like you are either not aware of them or deny them for power games'. But in the confidence of vodka, Neha replies that yes, you guys never understand women. And Ryan, Hari, the author and the male reader also have not understood them.

The story moves classically, there is a long climax and the protagonists are in big trouble. But in the end, they are salvaged and even the villains, the professors, are not loathed as hard as in the beginning. The novel ends like a feel-good movie, with everyone happy and Hari about to meet Neha.

May be it was not intended like that. May be it was because it is a story on college life where a lot of things happen and in the end problems are solved and everyone goes off in different directions in peace. Well, it had to end in a happy note, because for all the pathos in it, including Alok's accident, the novel is pleasant throughout. The sky is always blue and the air fresh in the world of Hari, Ryan, Alok and Neha. Had Chetan Bhagat ended the novel in a tragedy, five point some one; what not to do at IIT! would have been incomplete and mutilated.

Five point some one; what not to do at IIT! is written by Chetan Bhagat.