Review: Life and Promises

Life and Promises by Ila Garg
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

COVER AND TITLE:
Life & Promises is an attractive title. The novel has a beautiful cover with a lovely color combination. Heart (<3) on the head of ‘i’ in Life & Promises is like a cherry on the cake. Anniversary Edition tag tells specialty of the third edition within a year. Yes, you read it right 3 editions within 12 months. That’s why the novel is ‘A National Bestseller’.

LANGUAGE AND WRITING STYLE: Language of ‘Life & Promises’ is lucid. Italic fonts are used in a proper way. English synonyms are mentioned in a bracket next to several Hindi words. The introduction of several terms from the medical field like Renal Angiography/Angioplasty, nephrologist, urologist,haematologists, clotting disorder and PT-INR (Prothrombin Time) shows author’s knowledge and research for a perfect storyline. First person narrative conversation style and wonderful dialogues keep readers engaged with the storyline. Flashback technique is used gracefully. Some scenes are titled by place and date which make us feel like reading a diary.

UNIQUE FEATURES: - ‘Life & Promises’ contain beautiful poems by Rachna Sheth. Her poems perfectly suit in certain situations. I liked the poem ‘She said- I said’ in chapter 4. Hindi poem by Abhishek Atul comments on the irony of life in the epilogue.

CHARACTERS: 'Life & Promises’ is a beautiful piece of wonderful characterization. Sketches of all the three protagonists Rachit Aggarwal, Khushi Gupta and Radhika Banerjee are sketched beautifully. Sketches of major characters is another unique feature of this novel. I always see such kind of experiments in Gargi’s books.

SETTING: The plot of ‘Life & Promises’ is developed at Apollo Hospital, Delhi where Rachit narrates his story to Khushi. The storyline is developed into 3 major cities Delhi, Chennai (Tamilnadu), and Kolkata (West Bengal). Laxmi Nagar and Parathe wali gali in Delhi is portrayed beautifully. I felt like visiting the location live while reading few scenes. Description of IIT Madras and East Coast Road (ECR) is amazing. The introduction of Kolkata and Kalighat temple is described in brief, but helpful for those who haven’t heard or read about the temple.

PLOT AND STORYLINE: Life and Promises contain 16 chapters alongwithprologue and epilogue. I like a comparison between two different education systems in the second chapter. Rachit’s sarcastic comments are just brilliant. He comments on children’s fear or hesitation to talk about physical changes, sexual problems and symptoms of any decease with their parents. He beautifully demonstrates the beauty of Radhika in the fifth chapter. I loved the romantic scene between both of them. Rachit’s room in boy’s hostel represents a typical room of a college student and take readers back in those happy days of college life. Authors elegantly maintain the generation gap by referring the use of Bluetooth and Infrared for data sharing in the current generation of advanced data sharing applications. They remark on college students’ variety of passion and hobbies from different states. Jay satirically compares booking railway ticket with a war. A scene in which Rachit’s friends from different states debate to claim Rajinikanth ‘our’ superstar is just amazing. I got new information from Rachitthat “prepaid numbers don’t work in Kashmir.” Eighth chapter ‘Chak de! India’ take us into flashback and recollects memories of so many real incidents like Chak De! India movie in 2007 and T20 Cricket World Cup 2007.

In the second half, Rachit introduces a course of CA. His reference to Coaching classes in Kota reminds my recent trip to Kota. He describes coaching life of CA aspirant in detailed. I would like to quote his words which relate to me and every unemployed friend of to be an engineer- “The worst part is to see your engineer friends getting a job in the 7th semester, getting a promotion, increments, making foreign trips and finally getting married.” lol!! Rachit’s speech delivered to CA aspirants is truly motivational and inspires me a lot. Four examples of his inspiration show Rachit’spassion and authors’ knowledge about cricket.

Radhika’s letter sent to hospitalized Rachit is very emotional with Radhika’s sentiments and touches to reader’s heart. Her notes written in her personal diary literally brought tears to my eyes. Her diary relates my own diary and remembers memories of my someone closed which I am going to rewrite soon, if I found some traditional publisher of Marathi novels then you shall read my debut novel soon in coming years. Khushi indirectly appeals not to compare our failure with other’s success. She appeals sensitive people- “Don’t let your emotions overrule your decisions. Just give yourself some time, talk to yourself and relax your mind. Do what you like. Something that you love to do and it will act like a stress-buster.” She tells Rachit that what does inner happiness mean!

A MINOR TYPING ERROR: This is the second novel in last 20 books I have read as a book reviewer where I didn’t find major drawbacks. (Now you don’t start counting my mistakes in this review, you will be tired by counting lol!) This novel is almost error-free but the only exception is a minor typing error on page 64 (which I am highlighting with strikethrough effect in next sentence)- “Arrey,you will the get the answers to all of our questions there.” Of course, we can ignore this minor print error but I have pointed out here for the correction in the next edition of ‘Life & Promises’.

REVIEWER’S COMMENT:

“Life & Promises by Pulkit Gupta and Ila Garg keep readers engaged with so many twists and turns in the story. Second half of the novel gives you goose bumps. The love story of Rachit and Radhika make readers laugh and cry at the same time. Rachit’s deep observation and sarcastic comments make us think on crisis in our surround. Khushi’s positive attitude towards life motivates me a lot. I already have mucked every page of the novel as my favourite. ‘Life & Promises’ is added into my alltimefavourite list of the romance genre. I am glad to share that ‘Life and Promises’ is recently published in Hindi by Petals Publishers. I wish author and publisher a huge success for LNP’s Hindi edition ‘Khwaeshein’.”

RATING on BookLysis:This novel deserves one of the highest ratings in my BookLysis and I would rate Life & Promises 4.75 on the scale of 5 stars. This is the second highest rated book on BookLysis.

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