Book Review - 'Chaos Down Under'

Chaos Down Under is a sequel to Nishant Kaushik’s ‘Romance with Chaos’.

This book revolves around Nakul Kapoor and his career at a firm called Bytesphere. While the story plays out with excessive cliché’s and stereotyping, humour does find its way through the story. Even if it doesn’t make you laugh out loud, you do snigger while reading some chapters.

Nakul Kapoor, the protagonist, is assigned the role of a project leader for an assignment with an Australian client – Oz Mobil and has no human resources whatsoever to get the job done. And so begins a series of chaotic events. From fudging data to dealing with a neighbor who thinks of Nakul as a free service guy. The project takes Nakul and his team to Australia in the latter half of the story, where he has to deal with a rival firm vying for the same contract as ‘Bytesphere’, along with dealing with the client who prefers travelling to work on a horse, at the same time ensuring his lady love does not get attracted to another colleague working with them on the same project.

I absolutely love how the author has titled the chapters of the book. While the book is not so subtle in its usage of flowery language, constant use of it through the story did get a bit on my nerves. It just felt like the author was trying really hard to compete with Mr. Bhagat’s writing when he did not need to. Sure, the corporate world does have its mad days, but the incessant use of such scented language is annoying.

While the other characters of the story are stereo typed, their parts are written out quite well. Like the south Indian Girl who (still) needs permission from her parents to go abroad on a work trip, or the boy from Delhi recommended for a job opportunity with their company by the lady he is head over heels in love with. The crux of the story is how Nakul aces all these hurdles as a pro and succeeds in not only winning the contract for all of Oz Mobil’s projects, but also succeeds (finally) in getting the girl to accept him.

Ofcourse there are plenty of situations throughout the story which will make you smile at the absurdity of it all, one does feel like talking sense to Nakul when he is confronted with a dilemma.

I do wish I had read the prequel to ‘Chaos Down Under’. While this book did not fail to make me roll my eyes a gazillion times, courtesy the umpteen references to the first book, the main protagonist Nakul begins to annoy the living daylights out of you. I mean, there is only so much you can listen to a person crib incessantly about how the girl he loves does not love him back, or what a pain in the rear his boss Chirayu is. So much so that I am surprised as to how I did not yell out loud, “All bosses are a pain! We get it! Move on!”

A humorous take on the world of corporate slavery, Nishant Kaushik is planning to make the ‘Chaos’ series a trilogy. (or so the internet tells me.) The book is fast paced, mainly because of its language (barring the few times you want to put it down or whack yourself on the head with it.) So if you do have a few hours during a day with nothing better to do, pick up the book and have a read.