Mr. Jyotirmoy Mazdumdar, hails from Guwahati, the far end at north-east of India. He is doing his engineering from SRM University, NCR (Delhi) and is very fond of music, poetry and blogging; creative indeed. At a young age of 19 years, Mr. Mazumdar authored ‘Did She Love Me?’. The book comes with ‘A National Bestseller’ tag, almost impossible for the first imprint of any book. So let’s find out what made this book bestseller even before its release.
Do you think love has boundaries and restrictions?
Would you go on to an unknown place for someone you hardly know?
Do you think you can chase your dreams and your love together?
Can love make you forget things you thought were the most important in your life?
Yes, Love can change your life. In today’s modern world,
Yes: You can forget your dreams and fall in love.
He is a guy who wants to go beyond his limits to crack IIT, away from his parents away from the world. But he falls in love. Can his friends save his ship from sinking or has it already sunk? Can he achieve his dreams or does love become his new goal?
The cover jacket is good, and designed very well. After reading the back blurb, which reveals nothing about the characters but gives a rough picture of plot. The first impression was not good.
‘Did She Love Me?’ is the story of Jayrish, son of a millionaire, who wants to stand out of the crowd by chasing his ultimate dream- IIT. He rebels to fulfill his Delhi, and moves to Delhi to join JEE coaching. He is a self proclaimed half-lunatic stud and stands nowhere near the maudlin emotion called love. But it’s a novel, and therefore, there are plenty of attempted twists. He makes two best friends, and falls in love with Shweta, almost within a few minutes of first meeting her. Twist #2: She is already committed.
Twist #3: ‘True love finds the way to bring lovers together!’ After a lot of struggle, she falls for him too and their love story embarks on a new path of life. In the meanwhile, Jayrish faces some of his happiest moments of life, some of the saddest too, but with a desperate urge to be in love and achieve his career’s main objective, he lives through all of them.
Mazumdar is young, and that is painfully evident in his undeveloped writing. Even if I forget the age factor for a while, there is poor grammar, absolutely no editing, conversations without context, no time constraint at all, and cheerful use of the sms-lingo throughout the book. It’s almost as bad as the first draft of any manuscript.
On a positive side, some beautifully penned poems were nice to read, and Mr. Mazumdar gave his heart and soul to these poems. He portrayed the protagonist, Jayrish, very strongly and other characters played their part very well too. Choosing Delhi as backdrop of the story is wisest thing Mr. Mazumdar did. The description of places is really authentic. Young readers will find Jayrish’s antics cute.
The plot is not very original. It follows a predictable plot line of infatuation, love, proposal, initial rejection, dramatic heartbreak, heartwarming acceptance, immense love, and overdo of cheesy dialogues. Some may try to be a little more dramatic, and give it a sad ending instead. That’s the major point of differentiating these stories. Here I won’t spoil by telling which one it is, but it does follow the same suit.
To sum up, I would say that if you are looking for a well written novel with a unique love story, I would suggest you to skip this.
If Mr. Mazumdar is planning to write another book, I wish him the very best of luck, and suggest him to look more attentively into thought framing and editing department.
