Fate, Fraud & A Friday Wedding by Bhavna Rai

I had been reading a lot of history and art lately. And as a break from the heavy stuff I picked up this book Fate, Fraud & A Friday Wedding. Expected it to be a light read. But it turned out to be quite an entertainer. The backdrop of the story is the IT industry where I did spend some precious years of my life.

In a well-crafted story where the author has tried to weave the typical frustrations of IT professionals. The pressures that are constant in the field. The manipulations, the love stories, some frauds and a lot of suspense. Until almost the end you keep guessing the real culprit. And even if you kind of guess it ‘who’ it can be, you do not believe the author to give the story another twist. The story has been intelligently put together. Moving back and forth in time and space. The characters are pretty well defined and fit the stereotypes that they represent. The backdrop of Delhi and Noida has also been well captured.

At one place the Gayatri mantra has been wrongly quoted. And this is quite a silly mistake on the editor’s part. For some reason I see this being repeated in many books, where the shlokas or mantras are quoted without checking their correctness. There are other small catches like an arranged marriage between a Sharma and a Garg. But I guess most readers will overlook them for a good story. Some Hindi sentences here and there make me think that this book Fate, Fraud & A Friday Wedding was written only for the Indian audience. Though I assume the story is quite global given today’s world.

It is a good documentation of IT and ITeS industry. And the author seems to have lived in that industry well enough to understand its nuances. Especially the proposal making part. For the people outside there may be some things not so clear.

A fast, easy and interesting read, would especially interest those in the IT industry.

Buy this book – Fate, Fraud & A Friday Wedding by Bhavna Rai at Amazon India.