A Maverick Heart: Between love and life by Ravindra Shukla!!!

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            It becomes hard to pick and finish a book of almost 400 pages when you are used to reading books of 225-250 pages from a long while. The 5th book that I picked this year is "A Maverick heart: Between love and life" published by Leadstart Publishers. Book is of 383 pages and it is seriously very lengthy. I would recommend everyone to read it only when you are totally free from all the other stuffs of your life like college, office, family responsibilities etc. The best environment to read this book is while journeying in train or bus. It will be an excellent read then. The book was been selected by Penguin Publishers but because of some issues, author turned over to Leadstart. An unfortunate step but then, such mistake happens in a debut novel. The author Ravindra Shukla is an Engineering graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. He has been working in IT software technology. He has worked with PWC and IBM in USA for 15+ years. It is surprising to know that we have an author from IIT and not from Srishti Publications. :-) A rare of the rarest moment. Haha!

              Coming to the story of A Maverick Heart- It is the story of three young kids- Rahul, Neerav and Richita. All of them belongs to different family backgrounds with different approaches yet very close and affectionate towards each other. But life has some different plans for them. Their logic, practicality, emotions clashes against each other and all them get parted away. Being in the same IIT campus, meeting each other and befriending, they feel that their life is perfect. They love their college life a lot until Richita's family intervenes. Rahul's logic makes it difficult for everyone to stay with him. Later, all of them lands into corporate world and ends up in the realm of the social-political world. The book covers almost a journey of decade- 1996 to 2004. To know how the story moves forward, get the book and read it yourself. 

              Ravindra Shukla has a very fluent and good English. Yes, I get very few opportunities where I get to say that I got to learn something from author's language and this, fortunately, lands up in this good category. He has not used same sentences and emotions to express the events that we get to witness in almost every book. He has his own unique style which makes it evident that the author has talent to write. The way he has embedded lots of issues in a single story is appreciable. I got to learn so much from those parts. IIT's stories are abundant in market but still this is featured in its own artistic way. I can easily say that I will pick Ravindra Shukla's work next time I'll see it in market. 

              Coming to the review- The coverage of almost 10 years of all the three characters in the book is the reason why this book is good. Even when there are lots of characters in the book initially- Rahul, his mother, Richita, her parents, Roy's, Neerav, professors etc, author has succeeded in defining everyone's character uniquely that attaches us to each one of them. My favorite character of the book has been of Richita's because it is too real to be called a fictional character. :-) 

              The letter by Dr. Deen Dayal initially is so natural. The interaction of children with professors in a party-kind-of-gathering is amazing. I loved reading the part. Rahul and Richita's romance in the IIT campus is fine and mature. It isn't kept under the clouds of love making and sex but in determination and passion. The sketching part is sweet. The cheering part during Sporting ceremony is also a beautiful concept. The way Rahul and Richita has to part their ways later on in the story tells us what realistic world is and how some people have to take such decisions because of the situation. Richita's reaction to Rahul's last letter is emotional even when its expressed in just two sentences. Neerav and Richita's conversation in the Interactive session is very refreshing. Again, Deepak's coverage in the story is appreciable.

             The USP of this book is the conversations that are described between any characters at any point of time. Each one of them carries a philosophy and knowledge with a pinch of wit and wisdom in it. I just want to frame all the conversations and place them on walls of my house and read them every morning. They are so good. Not in any other book did I find such wisdom in conversations. Even if you don't have time to read the book, go through its conversation, you will learn a lot. :-) The climax of the book is some thing that satisfied me a lot because as the whole story kept on going with lots of sacrifices in every character's life, I was skeptic about the climax. 

              Coming to the drawbacks- As the 2/3rd part of the story is based in America, I found it hard to connect myself with the environment. Even the whole business processes and cities' names didn't excite me. Just because the characterization is deep, I kept on reading the book. Yeren's involvement in the story didn't create any magic and it could have been done without including her in the book. But because author wanted to show how the mentality of Americans and Indians differ, he used the character. Then, the lots of economy and politics that is discussed in the book is sometimes good but sometimes over descriptive. That's all. 

               In all, I would say that the book is different with an outstanding genre but still there was something missing because of which I am not giving it 4. I will rate it 3.75 out of 5. Go get the book. 

 Thanks.

 ABHILASH RUHELA - VEERU