-Karan Bajaj
Rating - 3/5
Indian literature has transformed
into this new urban style where writing is not just restricted to writers. As the phrase goes “Everyone has a story to
tell”, and they are indeed doing the same.
The book is funny and interesting
enough that you can go out dating with it...but love maybe not. Captivating
definitely because the writer has successfully been able to relate a Yale
graduate-Wall street investment banker to any other average student from IIM or
from any institute for that matter. The
title of the book “Keep off the Grass” is sprinkled like icing-sugar all over
the story once the protagonist (Samrat Ratan) lands in India. There are various
bites from the inside world of IIM (B) which overtly discloses the dirty
picture of a cut-throat competition existing in a nation of over 1-billion
population, the rat-race for the best GPAs, internships, placements (read
packages), the mean corporate world where `happiness’ is defined as the upward
projection of sales in the market even if you have to kill to be there. Then
come the extracts of spiritualism and religious fervour prevalent here which
has attracted many foreign visitors even before Zeenat Aman’s pot-smoking
hippie friends in Dum Maro Dum to till
date. The ABCD (American Born Confused Desi) Samrat gets fancied and as usual
more grass is smoked. Samrat with his two friends Vinod, Veer-Chakra winning
ex-Army officer who fought in Kargil (headstrong with his convictions like not
working for MNCs to deceive his mother-land) and Sarkar, a smartass IIT
graduate (laid-back on a bed of sarcasm wrapped in his illusive world blurred
with smoke) struggles through his 2 years journey in IIM(B) in a quest to find
what he really wants from life. A
million-dollar question that has befuddled many of us someday.
