Critique - An Unequal Harmony

The theme of the book can be a love triangle or extra marital affair. But for me the theme was being in love with 2 people at the same time.


The book has a busy start and before you know, the main characters are in the hospital due to an accident. From there the confusion starts as to who is the real couple and who is the third party. But not before long, when all is sorted out, the complications of characters give way to complication of emotions, especially for the husband.


The story is a pretty mature take on urban, big city life. The treatment of the story is different from usual where one wonders would it be possible to behave in this way if it was for real for a family. The story moves at a relaxed pace which brings out the ironic element as everybody knows life in Mumbai is pretty hectic. This results in sufficient time and pages being devoted to emotions and their thought process which is usually in a tangle which is relatable to people who have been in love, maybe with more than 1 person.


Another thing which is noticeable is the mixture of past and present times being used simultaneously. It definitely helps that each time is not so long that the reader loses connect with the other time. The story is cohesive still, which is good. This also results in lighter and humorous parts of the past story making appearances in between the heavy parts of the hospital.


The author has treated the subject with care, especially in few instances of marriage and death. He chooses to maintain two open cases where the reader can take a call how it would have been, if the book hadn’t ended where it did.


You can try this book for a surprisingly light read of a mature subject where you wish it shouldn’t happen to you at any cost, no matter which character you chose to be.

How to...

How to –

1. Act as if nothing has happened about you quitting, just like another day in your life, walk in a park, no big deal

2. Act crazy the next day, as if it is the biggest achievement of your whole life, be hyper about your strong minded actions, be proud that you stuck to your decision to quit, bore one and all with your great story of how you quit. Keep talking about it, make the other guy feel as if you are the only one who can do what you decide, highly focussed, be brash and gloat about it. You’re the one. Champion.

3. Ask yourself what is that one good thing about smoking? Take care, answers should not “feels good or stimulates the brain or helps me think etc etc.” We are talking about some physical benefits, because the harmful effects are pretty physical.

4. Repeat step 3

5. Repeat step 4

6. Whenever you feel like smoking, think about how good you will feel when you go to sleep after resisting this temptation successfully.

7. Keep yourself surrounded with friends who smoke, take in the passive if need be, just to satisfy your still weak mind.

8. Keep yourself surrounded with friends who smoke, to feel superior, because none of them can answer a simple question in Step 3, but they still can’t quit probably because they are not strong enough or because they still think its cool to smoke (tell them whats really cool is gloating about how you quit!) or they need your help. In all the above scenarios, you will feel great about yourself without losing friends.

9. Push your friends to quit smoking only if they ask about it, or if they offer you a cigarette, so that they never do that again after hearing you going on and on with your boring lecture to quit.

10. Think of the future when you have quit smoking, day dreaming of the fact that you are not harming your lungs anymore.

11. All the supposedly fear inciting signs about harmful effects of smoking do make you want to smoke more, agreed! But just enjoy making fun of those signs rather than lighting one.

12. Understand the concept of layers, reasons behind reasons, causes rather than effects, understand that there has to be a small seed way below and then step by step it should culminate into action of deciding to quit and then final step of quitting (watch the movie Inception, to get a hold of this concept.)

13. What is the motivation, that small seed of why you want to quit smoking? Is it that you want to run marathons? Or because you realize its effecting your health? Or because you want to go scuba diving? Or trekking? Or mountain biking? Do something for god’s sake, not just home to office to bar to home to office again.

14. You can do it only if you want to do it, not because anybody asked you to. Keep realizing that it was your decision, nobody else is facing consequences of your not quitting. Its only you.

15. Your friends don’t share the tar in your lungs and cancer cells when they push you to smoke, but they do gain a mental advantage over you if you cant resist. Maybe you have been doing the same to your other friends. All the more reason to quit!

16. You can quit only if you want to quit

17. You can quit if you want to quit