The campus book genre has been done to death. There have been some good (Keep off the Grass by Karan Bajaj, Above Average by Amitabh Bagchi), some average (Five Point Someone by Chetan Bhagat) and a whole lot of terrible books — titles you probably can’t even remember — on the subject. Sangeeta Mall’s Cloud 9 Minus One falls somewhere between average and terrible.
The book is about Shruti Narayan, an IIM Bangalore alumunus happily settled with husband and two kids in Philadelphia managing a writers’ colony. Her life is going about at a smooth pace until she gets an e-mail to attend a reunion of her batch in Bangalore. After much deliberation, Shruti finds herself at the IIM campus with husband and kids in tow.
Shruti, or rather “Ruts” as she was known in her IIM days, is worried that some skeletons in her closet which she had buried safely in her memories will come back to haunt her. Like meeting an ex-lover, or facing her closest friend who she abandoned in a sticky situation.
Cloud 9 Minus One has two parallel narratives — one in the present and the other as a flashback of the campus life. While the campus life part treads the same path as other books in the genre, it’s the present day scenario about how people change after 20 years is which makes the book different from the others. Mall handles the present day part much better than the campus bits of the book.
However, there are far too many clichés that are associated with campus books and you will find them in this book as well. Like a character who doesn’t give a damn about the whole IIM culture (Narayan’s best friend Priya) or a character who is a teacher’s pet and would do anything to score well in the exams. If you haven’t read any of the campus books, you might just find it interesting. Otherwise, it’s an old wine in a new bottle.
CLOUD 9 MINUS ONE
Author: Sangeeta Mall
Publisher: Harper Collins
Pages: 304
Price: Rs 199
