Lifeline is a story of love, friendship, money, office politics and startups. It is a story of survival and portrays love, care and respect revolving around myriad relationships and situations that we encounter in our lives.
Lifeline
My rating
4 / 5
Author
Chetan Maheshwari
Publisher
Story Mirror
Genre
Romance / Fiction
Number of Pages
177
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My Summary
Lifeline is a simple, sweet love story between Akhil and Teesha. The story also captures Rati, Akhil’s sister’s, life that is entwined with them. Akhil and Tesha, now workaholics, are school friends who haven’t met for decades accidentally meet in the lift of their offices. Circumstances lead to friendship and then romance brews between the two. But then obstacles appear in the form of loss of jobs for the two over hassles with their bosses.
Rati meanwhile is taking care of her son Ronit, while working on a social networking application. Without funding and support, she doesn’t see a future for her app. But Teesha and Akhil make her dream a reality but giving their full support by sharing expertise in their respective fields and form Lifeline - an app for entertaining people who come from outside the city and are stranded without any friends in a new place.
This is also the story of their startup that grew from rags to riches and went on to develop newer applications for noble purposes.
My Review
Chetan Maheshwari’s writing is simple to follow, and the book is divided into 45 small chapters that are quick to read and cover. So it was a fast-paced read.
The characters are portrayed realistically and depict real struggles the young working-class today face. I loved Rati for the fact that although she grew up without parents when faced with grave issues like the upbringing of a child out of wedlock, she did not back down.
Being from a Marwari family himself the author shares some business wisdom throughout the book that have I have noted with this review in the form of quotes.
The book though needs a round of thorough editing to do away with some minor grammatical errors and for better word usage. But these errors did not come in the way of my reading experience.
Final Verdict
Overall I think the book was a brave and wonderful first attempt by the author and it will entertain the readers with themes of societal issues women face, corporate cultures, romance, challenges of a startup, entrepreneurship and the intermix of personal and professional relationships.
- Top Quotes from Lifeline -
Akhil’s love for Teesha started with lust but he didn’t realize when love replaced that emotion.
You know, somewhere I feel that our fates will change, but I just have to find out how.
Work not for money but to develop yourself and enjoy your life.
Emotions don’t have a lot of space within office walls, and decisions are taken thinking about profits, personal benefits and relationships.
Akhil found one surprising fact – it was not that people were not aware that they were using too much technology in their daily lives, but the main problem was they didn’t know of an alternative with which they could replace this addiction.
People sometimes do not want to pioneer anything due to fear of loss of money and reputation.
One of the most important element of business is risk-taking appetite, and the more logical it is, the more successful you will be.
Never develop an ego after achieving success.
One of the most important criteria to run a business is to network smartly with the right people.
Chetan Maheshwari
I belong to a family of non-writers and had never imagined that I could break that mental rut and pen down a story. It was a slow process as I had professional aspirations too. However, this did not stop my deep desire to write and share my stories. I began my writing journey in 2009, by writing short stories, poetry and self-help posts on a blog called Smiling Planet, which later evolved to Life Mirror. Over the years, as I wrote more stories, I scrapped most of my ideas. But, the one that stayed with me was the hardships faced by professionals, and the entrepreneurs who want to create their startups. I belong to a Marwari family, who are known to excel in business. So, naturally, my first attempt at writing a story revolves around entrepreneurs. This book is about such people and the myriad challenges they face. The central theme focuses on office politics, which at times can mar the careers of professionals. The novel also touches upon the obstacles that society imposes on women, and how they overcome those. I strongly believe that love is an integral part of people’s lives, and readers will get a glimpse of the brewing romance between the two protagonists, Akhil and Teesha. (Excerpt from his book)
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