five point someone
Ryan, Hari and Alok.. the characters took me back to my hostel days. It must have 4 yrs now since I read "Five Point Someone" borrowing it from a friend in the neighbouring room and finishing it off overnight and co-incidentally also had a roomie named Alok. The book made rounds in the hostel for more than a year in the hostel itself and I still don't know if the guy who owns the book got it back or not. Anyway, Five Point Someone has always been the most favorite book atleast in the college circles.. it has hostel life, IIT, indiscipline, college romance all in it. Yesterday, I watched the play based on the same book Five Point Someone by Evam at Rangashankara.
The play is about the three freshers Alok Gupta, Harikumar, Ryan Oberoi in Mechanical Engineering program at IIT-Delhi. Ryan Oberoi, the most courageous among the three rescued Alok and Hari at the ragging session in the Hostel and thereafter they become good friends. First few days into the college, they realise how they were just involved in completing assignments over assignments and not enjoying their best days of life. So a day before the quiz, Ryan pulls in his two friends for a movie and they endup screwing up their quiz and hence become "Five-pointers" in their first semester itself. Ryan who didn't bother much about his grades but was street-smart and really intelligent, also belonged to a wealthy family but Alok belonged to really poor family who struggled to make a living with his bed-ridden father. The story continues on how these three friends continue struggling at IIT being five-pointers but seemed to be getting used to it as days passed, also partied with Vodka and Floyd on the insti rooftop and those regular outings. Meanwhile Hari falls in love with Neha, daughter of his Dept Head Prof Cherian. In one of their semesters, they had Prof Cherian taking a core subject and Hari was hoping that good grades could be the way to impress his girlfriend's dad. But even after struggling so much,the otherwise nervous Hari screws up his viva by taking Ryan's words that a shot of Vodka would do wonders for him at viva . But it turns out other way, he took an extra shot and the prof found out. Ryan had missed the viva. Later at their hostel room, they figure out that they had to slog for 20hrs a day if they had to make it in that subject. So they come up with a B-Plan and decide to get the paper. Several rounds of brainwashing each other, they figure out that Hari could get the office keys through Neha's car keys(they were together) and they sneka in. They did that.. but ALok got all excited ot find a working phone in Cherian's chmaber and decided to speak to his mother as his father was terribly ill. Ah.. there it goes. The campus security gaurd caught them red handed. The guys were put through Disciplinary Committee (Disco) and were suspended for the semester hearing which Alok makes a failed suicide attempt from the insti rooftop and fractures himself. During the same time, Prof Veera who was the only one who recognized Ryan intelligence got an offer to continue his once unapproved Lubrication project (LOOP) as the compensatory thing for the three of them. Finally somehow the three of them manage to be successful out of IIT.
The cast comprising Anshumani Rudra, Kedar,Praveen Bharadwaj, P C Ramakrishna, Sarvesh Sridhar,Shankar Sundaram, TT Srinath, Uttara Krishnadas, and Vidyuth S was simply amazing in every way be it the dialogue delivery, expressions, ambience etc. For 120 minutes, the audience was totally immersed in the play and had that classroom ambience. In the book, Hari is the narrator. So the play had dual characters of Hari with S Vidyuth being the narrator. It was really innovative and the way they managed to do it is really good. The lighting by Vijay Saravanan and sound by Vijay Karthik was excellent. AND I am lost for words for the director Nikhila Keshavan :). There is a trailer of the play on Evam's site here.Thank you Team Evam, for such a wonderful play
Also, deponti's review of the play for Bangalore Metroblogs here.