Zero Percentile

"Zero Percentile: Missed IIT, Kissed Russia" is one more novel by Indian author "Neeraj Chhibba" that I completed last weekend.

A book to read through if you are interested to know about Russia. The author has beautifully brought the internals of USSR. It is not like other good books that keep you captivated until you finish the last page of that... It is a good story, but not a good storytelling...

Zero Percentile is a heady cocktail of the fascinating adventures of Pankaj, a less favoured son of destiny across two completely different countries, India and Russia.

As a brilliant young boy Pankaj never imagines that he will ever be swamped with problems. Life with his friends Motu and Priya is fun. Always destined to go to IIT, a cruel accident makes him end up in a place he had never heard of before, Volgograd – a Russian ‘City of Heroes’, so-called for its role in the Second World War for stopping Hitler’s assault on Russia.

At hostel, in Volgograd, life is entirely different. There, not brain but brawn rules, which makes him land in jail after being induced into a gruesome brawl over food, with other very powerful and aggressive hostellers. Desperate for a win, he masterminds a coup, but makes the Dean his enemy instead who becomes hell-bent on destroying him. The journey never eases for him after that. Under extreme peer pressure he tries hard to lose his virginity and then cope with the agony of his best friend Nitin getting infected with HIV.

After his father’s death, he struggles to sustain himself in a highly expensive, newly capitalist Russia. His seniors, who he always looks upto as Gods unexpectedly turn into his enemy and conspire to ruin him with the help of the local mafia. He takes the gauntlet of fighting all these adversities and emerges victorious ultimately only to succumb to love.