Book: Life is what you make it
Author: Preeti Shenoy
Published: 2011
Publisher: Srishti Publisher
Language: English
Genre: Urban fiction
ISBN: 9789380349305
Rating (Goodreads, Amazon, Flipkart – overall): 3.8
Reviewer: Jaymala Bhoir
Reviewer Rating: 4
Review Date: November 21, 2013
It’s a fiction story written by Preeti Shenoy who is a master in getting the readers attached to the story so strongly that they not only understand but feel the character’s ups and downs. It could be the feeling of being loved or a feeling of determination, defeating everything that we face our everyday life. I would appreciate the writer for not being too unrealistic but by presenting the real life story through her observant eyes. Though it’s a work of fiction nevertheless it has not lost the hold over authenticity.
The story is about Ankita a young, intelligent college going a girl from a conservative family who faces a weird phase of life where she has no control over herself. From being too intelligent, matured, well-known; she becomes mentally ill and gets lost in herself.
The story starts from her college life and newly born feeling of love for her best friend. She is smart enough for getting an art club secretary post in her reputed St.Agnes college. Ankita’s changed practical approach is shown cleverly through the sudden events in which she is adopts a new life with different beliefs. As Vaibhav and Ankita are in long distance relationship, Ankita easily gets closer to Abhi and Vaibhav is unaware of all these things.
Later Ankita has to break-up with Abhi which is an unbearable pain for Abhi. Ankita takes it too practically and Abhi takes it to emotionally causing an accident death of Abhi in distress. She moves on and focuses her entire attention on studies after coming to Mumbai. Though a sentence said by Abhi’s grandfather ‘Never belittle love’ still makes her feel guilty like a whore. To come out from the pain and to overcome the feeling of guilt; she devote her whole time to studies. She tops in college, make new friends.
She thinks she has moved on and the happiness of work can get over the emotional trauma but there she makes the mistake. She is being appreciated and gets success, friends everything but the pain she had been kept avoiding somewhere disturbs her. She starts behaving weirdly. Steadily start doing silly things like boozing and dancing at the top of terrace, getting in relationship with Joseph to feel the love she had for Abhi, studying day and night, making poems through the guilt.
She loses all her senses. She is not able to write or read, she feels lost in crowd, and she feels like killing herself. She reaches to a mental stage where all her and doctor’s efforts are proved useless. Her destiny becomes too cruel to her. Abhi’s memories, gulit of cheating Vaibhave and Joseph kills her inside. Her emotional trauma doesn’t let her move on. All medicines, treatments go to vain.
After the regular attempts of suicide, she has been moved to mental hospital where she is treated in different way for cure. There she develops a special bond towards Dr. Madhusudan and trusts him fully. She does not meet her parents for months and make a different life there. After the long term treatment she becomes normal. She drops MBA and confess everything to Vaibhav and finally comes out from that weird phase of her life.
To know how she overcomes her trauma and to know how an emotional and practical balance is necessary to have a normal life; you must read this book. This book talks about the genuine feelings of a human being, a break down because of our own ‘Karma’, a suffering of a mental patient. I will recommend you to read this book because it will teach you how to have a balance between determination, faith, love, and career. It really makes a person cry because it is written out of a sensitive heart which touches your heart too.
– Jayamala Bhoir, TIF