Review: Blemishing the Odds

Blemishing the Odds by Harish Penumarthi
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is not a story. The book starts with a prologue where a father narrates his school days to his kids. This is more like a memoir rather than a story. Everyone can relate to this book. However, there are a lot of shortcomings which I noticed while reading the book. Firstly, this could have been edited. It looked as if the book was published without a thorough editing job. Secondly, a story has to be engaging enough to keep the reader hooked and make them want to know what happens next. Here, the book fails miserably. Cuss words, first kiss, coming of age experiences, experiments with cigarettes and alcohol are all fine as it is given at that age. But where is the story ?

Coming to the story, Raghav meets Trisha in the 8th grade. He is a lazy and incompetent guy while Trisha is the exact opposite. Opposites attract. Spending 3 years together, circumstances change. Duffer boy becomes smart and hardworking. Passes school with flying colours. Both separate and they meet again. Lots of tomfoolery between them in those 3 years. That sums up the story.

There is a reference to surfing the internet by Raghav somewhere in the book. If you think a bit, Raghav is actually narrating his story to his kids who are 18 and 14 years of age. So he must be at least 45 given that he has two kids. It would have been at least 30 years back when he was in school, which may be circa 1987, if not earlier. India did not have the internet at that point of time..at least it was not accessible to kids. Another irritating thing which I came across was the word"awesome". It was used at least about 50 times in the entire 170 page book. Moreover, which Indian dad will narrate his love life and first crush in school to his kids just because they are pestering him ?

Bad editing or no editing spoils the book. The author has tried to delve deep into his four main characters, Raghav, Trisha, Dad and Mom but that's about it.

The climax is awful and unbelievable. One fine day, Raghav is suddenly sent to Mumbai to study and the day he lands he meets his lady love. That ends the story (sorry, there never was a story !). The one good thing I liked was how the author drew up the Indian parents' mentality of constantly pushing their child to study which is prevalent throughout.

Now comes the epilogue. Raghav's kids ask him to complete the story. He tells them that he will some other time. Is there a sequel to the book ?

The author being a debutante, I wish him success for future.

PS: - I thank the author who gave me the book for an honest review.


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