Gritty, glitzy reel-isations

[1]

If there is one genre holding out a candle to Indian publishing industry these days, then it is coming of age. Almost everyone has a story about growing up and more often in more ways than one. Ushering in the same genre is Rajeev Jhaveri’s debut I, Romantic. As the cover jacket duly announces its intent to be soon made into a motion

picture and Rajeev acknowledges Ashmit Patel among others on the first few pages, you know you have a Bollywood pot-boiler bubbling timely beneath the pages. But as one goes through the first few chapters, it becomes pleasantly evident that at least this has the making of a good one.
Avinash Rai, a preppy youth in the ’90s joins the Army simply to be a hero. Faster than music, more reliable than cricket he believes this will be his chance to show the world what he is made of. The story begins in a flashback after his exit from the academy, when he joins as a recruit to be sent straight to the war zone. Between shooting his first militant and gallantry awards, his life is a whirlwind between war postings, women and well, mostly more army men. With his numerous theories regarding women, he shows almost the same precision and strategy that he does on the field. As he goes between the past and present, story continuously builds towards that one incident that would change his life.
And that it is, when he meets his ‘Jill’, Pria, an FTII student, as predictably opposite from his notion of a perfect woman as a Bollywood plot could be. And as he follows her to music class, doors of perception open and so does his journey towards being a new man. As he devours the world of Beethoven, Mozart and Tchaikovsky moving to Proust, Kerouac and Sartre, he sees his world with a new finder. While Army becomes a thing of the past, he realises his inherent passion for cinema, gets famous and gets the girl of his dreams.
Even though the novel is well written, Rajeev admittedly mentions having little/no knowledge before his tryst with music, smattering it with quotes, one liners and phrases. Fairly enjoyable, right from Avinash’s slanderous encounters till his narrative of the Mumbai bomb blasts in 1992, the plot remains tight throughout the book. Though giving his book a complete masala ending, Rajeev has ensured that the reader’s interest remains piqued, despite having the movie being made almost simultaneously with the book’s release.