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Author: Aseem Vadehra Total Pages: 171 Total approximate words: 62,073 I started reading this book a long time ago, perhaps a couple of years ago. But never finished it. In fact, never even read from the first chapter. Just randomly picked up one story and left it even before finishing it. When I picked it up again, after years of abandonment in the book shelve, the familiar feeling of reluctance crept in, and for a moment I hesitated to commit, to read it at one go, and not just leave it because one of its pages was boring. So, I dared. I use the word ‘dared’ because commitment to read a book from start to finish at one go and completely letting go of the temptation to pick a side book, is a big deal for me. It is almost like a promise of undivided attention to the book by the reader, to be with it, throughout its journey from the beginning to the end, no matter what. Read on to know, if it was worth the commitment, and if you should think about making one, with this one here at least! SYNOPSIS “A chance at happiness”, is a collection of 17 short stories. The stories have different narration styles, but the core writing style is similar, of course. For example, certain chapters have the protagonist as the narrator, and in others, the narration is in third person. Every story has a different plot, obviously, but the characterization in each is similar to an extent. For example, almost all the stories happen in one city; most of the protagonists have similar wants, desires, and regrets, come from similar background (wealthy businessman), is attracted towards female in one particular way, is miserable in his life in one way or the other. A brief about the stories below: 1. Mr. Alexander The protagonist Akshay, is a self-made man, who happens to meet his school teacher, Mr Alexander, and his mind goes back to his schooldays. 2. Tara The narrator is in love with the girl of his dreams, Tara, but his table tennis practice introduced him to his partner’s sister Pallavi, who is attracted to him. The two make out a couple of times, but Pallavi’s brother Ishan spill the beans to Tara. A heartbroken Tara eventually moves on and gets married to her drama school partner Shiv. 3. A Chance at Happiness Amit is a school going kid, and is from a wealthy family. He is sexually abused by one of the male servants at his house, who later is diagnosed with HIV, and is subsequently kicked out. Amit lives with fear for twelve years, before he gets the courage to actually do a test for himself. The test declares him HIV negative, but the thought of all those years, reminded him of how strangely, he enjoyed bits and pieces of it. 4. A Date in Paharganj Ankit is a spoiled brat from a wealthy family, and is working with his father in the family business. On his flight from Chennai to Delhi, he meets Annalisa, an Italian tourist, and tries to impress her with his fake American accent. When Ankit offers to drop her to her booked hotel room in Paharganj, she invites him for lunch the next day as a thank you gesture. Ankit gets his hopes high, and the two end up making love a week before Ankit’s arranged marriage. When Ankit’s father comes to know about it, he fires the driver for taking him to Annalisa’s address. 5. Bachelor The narrator is secretly in love with his best friend’s wife, and when the wife plays a game of questions about how well the spouses know each other, she is disappointed at both her husband, and his best friend, the narrator. 6. The Company Aman is trying to grow his family business after his father’s demise, but one visit from the Income tax officials, rob him from a fortune of money. 7. Dior Payal and Kapil are married for four years, but despite having a lavish lifestyle, Payal feels lonely, as apparently he is not the same guy that she fell for. Dressed up in their expensive attires, the couple go to a lavish party, where Kapil gets busy with others, leaving Payal on her own. While having drinks in the bar, she meets Gautam, Kapil’s friend and they make out in a secluded corner of the farmhouse. 8. Diwali The narrator Aditya, goes to a lavish Diwali party where he meets with an average looking woman and feels attracted towards her. As the two decide to go to a more isolated part of the party, he gets too close to Deepa and tries to kiss her, and is taken aback when she doesn’t reciprocate it. 9. At the Eye Doctor The narrator, with his loving wife visits an Ophthalmologist. While waiting for his turn, he rests his head on his wife’s shoulder, and thanks his lucky stars to bless him with a wife like her. On sudden appearance of the wife’s ex-fiancé, he feels a hint of uneasiness and slight change in his wife’s composure. Instead of waiting further for his turn, he tells the staff that he will visit later, and leaves the clinic with his wife. 10. In Bombay The protagonist architect, is an asexual who is incapable of falling in love with any gender. As he flies to Bombay to his best friend’s party, the company of a woman, over a moonlit night, makes him wonder, if that is what love felt like. Unfortunately for him, he would never know. 11. Karan and Maneck Karan, a wealthy businessman endures the grief of loosing his closest friend in a car accident. He lovingly goes back to the days of their first meet and the bountiful days after. 12. A Highway Deal The narrator is an established businessman who drives down to Ludhiana for work. On the way back, his site manager, Prakash Negi, accompanies him. During the drive on the highway, their car hits a passer-by who dies on the spot. With minor damage in the car, the duo makes a run from the scene on the site manager’s advice. From the next day onwards, Negi starts blackmailing the narrator for a hefty amount of 5 lakhs a month for the rest of his life, eventually costing him his marriage and the company. 13. Nitin and I Two friends have the time of their life in a bar, where they take rounds of a girl in blue, with silicon tits, and long legs. Eventually the girl’s boyfriend starts shooting and two bullets hit the friends. The following events happen in slow motion, until the two leave the bar and take a taxi to the nearest hospital. 14. A Fine Provenance Siddharth, son of a wealthy art dealer travels to London, to finalize a deal for an original art piece from its owner, an old English couple. Through the deal he experiences the warm hospitality of the friendly couple who assumed that the piece of art would go to another collector and not to a dealer. 15. A Contract of Dreams Kunal, the son of yet another wealthy businessman, is all set to take the contract for a big project. After the lengthy meeting and his constant regret about not being able to follow his dream of being a film maker, he finally bags the contract from the stingy client. As the meeting finishes, and everyone leaves the room, he tells the project director of his company, that the stingy budget of their clients have left them with no other option other than to cut cost by getting cheaper labor. 16. The House Gautam and Prateek have been friends from high school, and for the construction of his forty thousand square feet mansion, Gautam gives the contract to Prateek. But when Gautam invites Prateek for a party with cocaine and strippers, and encourages him to have sex with one of the females, he leaves the party. After that incident, Gautam holds his payment until Prateek invites himself over for a similar party like before. To mix in the crowd and hoping that Gautam will release the payment, Prateek cheats on his wife with one of the females in the party. 17. Thirty Seconds Aditya who has just stepped in his thirties, and is recovering from a heart break, falls for a ‘real life fairy’ who is only visible to him. They have short but interesting meet ups until one day she doesn’t show up anymore. What I liked about the book? Short stories. A different perspective. All the stories have the central character of men. Even as a victim, in certain stories, which was like a fresh perspective, considering usually ‘the woman’ is the ‘victim’. Certain characters stood out, like the asexual architect, who felt everything in detail, yet did not feel love. The average lines are longer in the narration, much different than the usual ‘short sentences’ used in most fictions. The length of the sentences, weaving the details of a scene or of the character’s mind, made them kind of lyrical. What I didn’t like about the book? Mediocre plot, and monotonous characters. The protagonist in most of the stories have similar characterization, wealthy, mostly not happy for some reason, wanting something different than what they already had. Also, almost all the stories happen in the same city, Delhi. CONCLUSION This book is not the best work of Aseem Vadehra, but I am hoping he writes more and creates his best work. The writing, in some sense has finesse and reminds of authors like Jhumpa Lahiri. A huge lot of Indian fiction books lacks this quality, which is a must for a rich writing. Majorly because, we are not native English speakers. If you like indulging exclusively in good writing, and by that I mean only the style, including the length of the sentences, the words used, the patience in describing a scene or a character’s intentions, all of that, despite not necessarily having a very strong story line, then this book is a gem. I may or may not read this same book again, but I would definitely read Aseem Vadehra's other books (if there are any). Ratings would be a 6/10. Ease of reading: 7/10 Character/ Plot building: 6/10 World Building: 6/10 Do let me know your opinion about this book, through an email or post it in the comments section. Best five responses will be featured in the website. Happy reading! DISCLAIMER This review is based on my personal reading of the book and understanding it with my own limited experiences. This review is just a singular perspective and not the only one.

Author: Virginia Vallejo Total Pages: 456 Total approximate words: 123,120 So, 2019 was a lot of binge watching for me. Thanks to my hectic job, and my sister’s generosity that I would be too tired to leave my room during my rest days, and ended up watching free Netflix, other than sleeping and eating. From those slumbering days, I discovered many hidden gems from this pandora box called the Netflix. There was this special section of series, based on real life events that really caught my eye. The Spy, When They See Us, Unbelievable, Ted Bundy Tapes, Narcos, Narcos Mexico, to name just a few of those gems. The kind of absolute nerd that I am, after watching such series or movies I usually look for the book with the same title. And guess what I found! Watching Narcos, the series, I was hoping to find a book written by one of its protagonists, but instead I found two books, ‘Sins of my Father’, by Juan Pablo Escobar, son of Pablo Escobar (the drug kingpin of Colombia) and ‘Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar’, by Virginia Vallejo, Colombia’s most famous Television host during the 1970s and 1980s, and one of Pablo Escober’s many lovers. The later was available in amazon for sale, and within the next two weeks, I got my own copy of a version of the ‘Narcos’, to be kept with the rest of my treasures, hopefully for the rest of my life. (Pro tip: Narcos is a pretty cool series to watch in Netflix, if you haven’t watched it yet.) SYNOPSIS Virginia Vallejo, meets Pablo for the first time in his place, Hacienda Napoles in 1982, when she visits the estate with her then fiancé, Anibal Turbay, the nephew of the ex-president of Columbia. A few weeks from then, Escobar invites Anibal to visit the Hacienda of Jorge Luis Ochoa, Escobar’s best friend. Through her cocaine snorting fiancé, Virginia comes to know that cocaine was the real deal, and weed was not even enough to pay for a private runway, and that was why the Davilas, king of Marijuana greased everyone’s palm to reopen the Santa Marta airport in the night, to dispatch planes loaded with what was famed as the world’s best marijuana. Now that Virginia and Pablo were secretly lovers, she was travelling between Bogota and Medellin for work and to be with him. She talks fondly of the next fifteen months as the two spend more and more time together. Through one of these meetings, that she meets Guastavo Gavieria, Pablo’s cousin and business partner. Unlike Pablo, Guastavo was inscrutable, silent, secretive, distant, and much more mature than him. Pablo tells her about his ambition, from the time he was a small kid, which was to be the richest man in Colombia, and then be the most popular political leader of all times. When Virginia interviews Pablo in one of the poorer neighborhoods, after he donated a number of basket ball courts to such neighborhoods, she sees Pablo’s twenty-three years old wife for the first time with him. Through Escobar, Virginia is acquainted with news that usually the media didn’t have access to. In 1983, Virginia was one of the first few people who came to know about the plane crash that killed the head of the M-19, an insurgent group, who was travelling with a cash of USD 600,000. While Escobar’s men found out the crash site in a few hours, the Colombian government took nine months to recover the bodies. Julio Mario Santo Domingo, one of Virginia’s ex, introduces her to David Metcalf, grandson of Lord Curzon. Virginia who was madly in love with Pablo, felt nothing for Metcalf, no matter how royal he was. Around the same time, the president appoints a new minister of justice, Rodrigo Lara, who immediately accuses Escobar of drug trafficking and having ties with the guerilla groups. Escobar’s parliamentary immunity is lifted, and an arrest warrant is issued. The American government revokes his tourist visa and the Colombian government seizes all the exotic animals from the zoo in Hycianda Napoles. All these leads Escobar into partial hiding. And then Virginia meets Rodriguez Orijuela, head of the Cali Cartel. The time that followed, the ‘palm greasing’ didn’t work anymore and the Colombian government, with the army’s help, confiscated planes, helicopters, yachts of drug dealers, and arrested hundreds of people involved in it. Meanwhile, Virginia meets Gilberto Rodriguez Orijuela, who she mentions as the friend of the bureaucrats and the elite, very unlike Escobar, also with whom she develops a fleeting affair. The new minister of Justice, Enrique Perejo enforces extradition of money launderers to the U.S., which leads the king of Cocaine to form Los Extraditables, a group whose only agenda was to oppose extradition of Colombian criminals to the States. The DEA goes full fledged into collecting evidence of drug trafficking, and becomes successful to do so. The U.S. government gets photographic evidence of Escobar and Rodriguez Gacha loading seven and half tons of coke into a plane. In the days that follow, Virginia gets more and more afraid for the love of her life, as Pablo Escobar becomes the most wanted man in the world. When Virginia gets an offer to work for a Miami based television channel for USD 5000, Escobar offers her USD 80,000 to just be at home until she finds a producer who knew her worth. He also introduces her to the founder of the M-19 insurgent group. As an effort to not be extradited, Escobar gives the man a million dollar to destroy all the evidences (six thousand files) against him at the Palace of Justice. By the end of 1985, Escobar becomes the reason for the one hundred killings in the Palace of Justice, and the massacre in Armero, killing twenty-five thousand people more, other than the many, many mores. Viginia finally decides to severe all ties with this man. In 1993, eleven years after they met for the first time, Pablo Escobar is killed in a shoot out with the police. Lines that I really loved “How marvelous people are to me when I leave Colombia, because in other countries, it is not a crime to always look radiant with happiness.” “But how could a man have such a beauty, such a queen, such a goddess, as a girlfriend? A woman like you is for marrying! You tend her needs every day and never look at another woman again for the rest of your life.” “What is the formula for cocaine, Gilberto?” “Yes, he has never accepted that in this business, like everything in life, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. Someone steals two hundred kilos here, three hundred kilos there… and you resign yourself, because what else can you do? He, on the other hand…. every time someone steals five kilos, he leaves five people dead! At that rate, he’s going to kill off all of humanity!” “While it’s true his best quality is his unique ability to anticipate everything that’s bearing down on him and to prepare a crushing counterattack, his worst defect is an utter lack of humility in recognizing and correcting his mistakes, and an even greater inability to measure the consequences of his actions.” CONCLUSION If you like reading memoirs, this book is worth your time. Even though the book is a translation from its original published language Spanish, the narration isn’t lost in the transition, like one might assume. It is the memoir of one of the famous media personalities of Colombia and her links to the most dangerous man of the world; so the story is a lot about events happening in chronological order surrounding ministers, and famous men and women. May be that’s why it has less of a personal touch and more of the ‘glam’ quotient in it. Of all the memoirs that I have read of famous personalities, this one stands out differently, but in a good way. I would give it an overall rating of 7/10. Ease of reading: 7/10 Writing style (to keep the reader engaged): 7/10 Resonating to the reader (moving, and relatable): 6.5/10 Do let me know your opinion about this English translated Spanish best seller book through an email or post it in the comments section. Best five responses will be featured in the website. Happy reading! DISCLAIMER This review is based on my personal reading of the book and understanding it with my own limited experiences. This review is just a singular perspective and not the only one.