2 States- The story of my Marriage

The basic story of the book is very simple. Krish Malhotra, a brilliant and serious IIT Graduate from Delhi meets up with an equally intelligent and vivacious Ananya Swaminathan at IIMA, India's most prestigious Management college. Despite being opposites in nature and coming from two different states (Krish is a Punjabi and Ananya is a Tamil Brahmin), they are both drawn to each other and after a brief period of platonic friendship, Ananya moves in to live with Krish in his hostel dorm, spending two wonderful years of their college life together. As the graduation day appears, they have to go seperate ways, since the focused and ambitious Ananya wants to work for HLL located in Chennai and the 'only interested in making money' Krish wants to join any company which will give him the maximum salary. But they also realize that they are deeply in love with each other and want to take the committment forward. Krish ends up proposing marriage to Ananya and she happily agrees.

The two over-acheiving youngsters naively believe that their parents would be more than happy to accept the match, not realizing that, despite their educational qualificiations and modern outlook, they still belong to a place called India, where state boundaries, languages, customs, food preferences and traditions change with every 200 meters of land border.

Ananya's super conservative Tam Brahm parent's are completely against the 'Punjabi fellow' as they keep referring to Krish and predictably, Krish's mother's is pretty much against getting a 'Madrasan bahu' for their family!😆

What follows is a howlarious and heartwarming tale, when Krish goes all out to win his prospective in-law's hearts, by landing himself a job in Chennai, where he alternates between taking tutions for Ananya's nerdy young brother, making powerpoint presentations for her stern and repressed father and trying to arrange singing concerts for her extemely humorless mother! All the while, fighting off insecurity and jealosy as proposals keep coming for his good looking and well qualified girlfriend.

With great difficulty and a lot of laughs, Krish finally manages to impress his would be in-laws and Ananya on the other hand, manages to kind of impress Krish's mother and his extended Punjabi clan!

But the Swaminathan's and Malhotra's hate each other on the first sight and a lot of misunderstanding and chaos ensures that a heartbroken Ananya breaks off her relationship with Krish, who is so shattered that he spends his nights googling ways to commit suicide!😲😆

A twist in the tale occurs and an unlikely suspect manages to salvage the situation, which ends in Krish Malhotra, the Punjabi lad from Delhi getting married to the love of his life, Ananya Swaminathan from Chennai! The entire chapter dealing with Krish's very Punjabi family landing in Chennai for the typical South Indian wedding is the highlight of the book and will probably have you rolling in laughter! (Krish has to wear a traditional 'veshti' and when he does, his mickey mouse brief's are visible from under it!😆)

The epilogue tells us that the couple are parent's to a set of twin boys whom Krish insists belong neither to Punjab nor to Tamil Nadu, but to a state called India!😊

Its a very well written book, racy, pacy and extremely entertaining! Plus, it is pretty much autobiographical and one can feel that the author has put his heart into the words! (The author is a Punjabi and his wife a Tamil Brahmin and they both met at the IIMA and are now parent's to a set of twin boys!)

You are drawn into the lives of the two youngsters, and end up rooting for them! The depiction of South India culture is spot on and extremely funny, but a lot of readers (the South Indian's mainly) might feel offended, as the author has drawn the maximum laughs out of them!

The heroine is shown to be modern, ambitious and bold, who has no qualms about indulging in pre-marital sex or being in a live-in relationship, yet is insistent on getting married, only with the approval of their respective families. The boy on the other hand is shown to be a committment phobic who despite his earlier dithering on their relationship, goes all out to win his girlfriend's hand in marriage.

The story is kept very light-hearted yet has a simmering intensity to it, especially in the relationship between the protogonists! Their love story is both casual, funny yet has depth and emotion in it!

The one-liner's are priceless and so are the protogonist's self-observation's on live, love and his in-laws😆 The side characters, like Krish's, good-hearted but irritating South Indian boss, his conservative Tamilan roomates and the supercilious groom who comes to 'see' Ananya for marriage make up for a lot of funny moments!

Overall, a very enjoyable read and something you would like to read again and again!

Needless to say, Chetan Bhagat has a winner in his hand with this one!👏

i wanted to read the book..hopefully i can :)