And We Remained I Junaid Asad.

• Book: And We Remained - an absorbing story told differently. 
• Author: Junaid Asad.
• Publication House: self-published. 
• Category: Fiction. 
• Rating: 4/5.

Story-in-Short:

And We Remained started as a story which needed to be told. The story though, wasn’t a short one. How it needed to be told had to be very different as well.

And We Remained then turned into a 52,000 word novel with an absorbing storyline and a unique narration style. In the 1990’s, India is going through tremendous socio-economic changes. Set in this era, it is a coming of age story of five engineering friends—Sahir, Sandeep, Gopal, Anand and David—and the women in their lives, especially the beautiful Wardha. Their intertwined story is told by these friends through first person accounts of events in their engineering college contrasted in alternate chapters with their lives a few years later when they keep in touch, narrate events in their lives and share their experiences in India and abroad through emails.

And We Remained takes you on their entertaining journey through college, love, heartbreak, prison, politics, drunken binges, strip clubs, US and Europe as they hang on to sanity and their identities in a fast changing society and a nation in flux.

In my view:

Thoughts of school, college and university days can easily make one turn nostalgic. Indeed, refreshing are those salutary days surrounded by friends, enhanced by boyfriends and girlfriends (if any), pranks on teachers and friends, bunking lectures and unlimited fun. 

I just finished reading an absorbing story And We Remained by Junaid Asad. This story too reminds one about college/university days. This story basically, takes us to Bangalore where the protagonist and his friends are pursuing Engineering from ECVU. Sahir Hasan, Anand Nair and Gopal Veranjanyelu are their names and these three are friends. Here, one fine day, they meet a girl Wardha and her friend Kalpana. Both of them are from BULSH. Wardha is a very jovial kind of a girl who maintains good relations to the protagonist as well as his friends.

While Wardha, her friend Kalpana along with these four guys Sahir, Sandeep, Gopal and Anand are playing a game at the university library, their principal walks in with cops and charges these four boys for ragging. When Wardha and Kalpana attempt to deny the principal’s claims, he shuts their mouth. Eventually, four boys are taken to the police station where they are beaten black and blue. The principal, through this act, takes revenge from these four boys. At this difficult time, not only their friends and teachers but also Wardha stands by them. 

Interesting memories of university elections, activities of student union, feelings and proposals for the beautiful Wardha, combatting the indecent principal are all beautifully narrated by the author in the story. 

Over-all: When I received the book and saw the cover, I did not find it that interesting. But it is not that bad too. This is a self-published novel and this must be kept in mind that the author himself has designed the cover. Commenting on the title of the book, it’s catchy and good enough. I would personally appreciate the internal layout of the book which is really well designed. 

The story is divided into two parts. Also, along with the actual story, emails and messages exchanged between these friends have been given a space in the book. The narration of the author completely engaged me in the story and I was going on turning page after page to find more.  Only at some parts, close to the end of part 1, this absorbed attention tends to dodge. Yet, the book, I’ll say, has an attention grabbing story and I am sure readers too will enjoy reading it! 

Considering everything, I would rate the book with 4/5. Congratulations to Junaid for his debut novel and hope he comes up with more such interesting stories.

NOTE: A review copy of the book was provided by the author himself. 

• You can get a copy of this book via: Flipkart, Amazon.in, Amazon.com.