Book Review : 2 States - The Story Of My Marriage

I guess this is the first book that I read at a single stretch after a long time..Infact first book that I read completely after joining IIM :) .. Picked up Chetan Bhagat's 2 States from a book exhibition... I had lots and lots of assignments , work, studies pending.. But none of those concerns stopped me once I started reading :)

The story is quite fast paced initially.. IIM life..That struck a chord initially itself.. Cribbing about mess food..the cryptic economics classes...the gossips that start to go on when a girl & guy starts going around..late night assignments.. Before you adjust yourself to the fast paced story style, the couple has kissed , had sex & has started a live-in relationship ...

From here on, the story takes a melodramatic Hindi movie style.. They graduate, guy gets a job in Chennai along with her.. Guy tries various tricks to impress the girl's family, IIT Coaching for girl's muggu brother, conflict of South Indian & North Indian cultures, Office politics & much more..

I'm not killing the suspense by narrating the entire story course...I rate this book somewhere in between 5 point someone & One night @CC .. Infact the fast paced first part is almost at par with 5.someone.. Second half is also good, though in a different style..

I really liked some of the the smart dialogs that he has given..

"I've never spoken to an IIT'ian before "

"You are not missing much :) "

"If there is nothing as attractive as a pretty girl, there's nothing as repulsive as a cocky chick"

"Every girl wants an IIT brother, big help in quant subjects" :)

"You're not talking to her"

"You seem quite concerned :)"

"Ok..you are better looking" .. The girl who asks the question is the better looking one :)

.... And much more

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Keywords, Psychology, Computer Science

I just went through the google analytics report of my blog indicating the keyword searches that lead people to my blog...Some of the interesting ones given below..

1. Satanic worship in Kerala , Devil worship in Kerala ( 6 ppl searched for this ... :) )

2. NRI going back to India ( Was that a matrimony related search :P )

3. Whats happening In the economy ( Ah..atleast google considers my writings on these worthy enough )

4. Aim of my life ( People do tend to ask this question.. But finding out answer to this question from web looks to be a bit weird :) )

5. Keralamatrimonynair ( ahem!!!...Google is intelligent :) )

6. Ponds facepowder product presentation ( Ah...this should be some MBA student )

7. Spending money in MBA is good or not ( I wish it is good :) )

If I go through some of these keyword targeted posts, I might be able to find some word-based relation between the keywords & what i've written .. For eg..The satan / devil related searches were actually landing on http://ajithprasadb.blogspot.com/2007/06/gods-own-country-devils-own-people-and.html

Now, there is some literal matching between the keywords in searches to whats there in that post...But semantically those are very different.. What the person who typed those keywords wanted & whats there in that post is totally different from a semantics perspective... And thats where the technological challenge still lies ahead for Google.. Search as a computer science problem is only solved to the extent of 5%.. There is still a long way to go before Google/ Bing bridges the gap between what consumers intend & where the search results lead to..

Another aspect here is the ability of Google to know whats the pulse of the masses.. Having a big DB of such keywords is like knowing what the world thinks..And that in turn throws up amazing marketing opportunities..

( PS:- If you are more interested in this field , I'd recommend a book named "The Search" )