The Girl in Room 105

A short summary of the book and reasons to read it.

Nandhini Saravanan

Published in

Story In Short

5 min readJan 16, 2019

Author Profile

Chetan Bhagat is an Indian author who has written stories focusing mainly on Indian love and romance. Often his books are easily labeled as love stories. His best selling books are Five Point Someone, One night at the Call Center, 2 States and much more. You can view his books on his personal website: http://www.chetanbhagat.com/

The Story In Short

This section is about the gist of the book. The Story, in Short, may give you a reason to read a book, and that is the whole aim of the publication.

Part 1 : The Current Story of Keshav

Chetan Bhagat has taken a different path in this book. He himself got tired of love stories. This book is a thriller love story. The main characters of the book are Keshav, Saurab, and Zara.

Keshav is an IITian who works as a teacher in JEE tuition center called ‘Chandan Classes’. He hates his job and reaches out through LinkedIn, but fails to find a proper job. He is a part of an orthodox family. His mother is a homemaker and his father is a part of the RSS, which is a political party in India. As always, he has a love story with a colleague called Zara, who is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in IIT. Zara is from a Kashmiri Muslim family and their love story ends due to their families, who fight over religious issues. Let’s not get into that. If you are an Indian and reading this, you would know the issues an inter-religion couple would face in the country. Keshav couldn’t come out of the affair and keeps remembering Zara, who then loves Raghav(Keshav’s classmate). Raghav happens to be an intelligent person with a geeky look. Keshav often calls Zara begging her to come back to him, but she never agrees. Saurabh also works in ‘Chandan’s Classes’. He is from NIT and is a friend of Keshav. He helps Keshav forget his past love and focus on his future.

Part 2: That Night

As the title of the book suggests, Zara is the occupant of the Room No:‘105’. It is Zara’s birthday and unfortunately Raghav is beaten up by some goons and is at Apollo hospital. Keshav controls his urge to call Zara and wish her for her birthday at midnight. He and Saurabh drink wine and fall asleep. Around 3 a.m. in the morning, he gets a text from Zara, who asks him why he didn’t wish this year. He is shocked to get a text from her. Zara goes on and tells him to meet him in her room immediately. Keshav rushes to the girls’ hostel with Saurabh. He shows a fake ID card and enters the hostel. He climbs up the mango tree and slides into the window of Zara’s room, which is kept open waiting for his arrival.

The room is dark and it is utterly silent. Zara is asleep on the bed. He touches her forehead and feels a cold chill. He then switches on the light and sees her dead. He is shocked, scared and sad altogether to see his love, like a corpse on her birthday. He informs Saurabh who suggests they run away from the scene. But Keshav becomes determined to find the killer. The rest of the story is his journey where he stands by Zara after her death to find justice.

Part 3: The Journey to find the killer

Keshav goes through a journey of suspects. He informs the police, Raghav and Zara’s parents. The police arrests the watchman of the hostel, who is missed from the CCTV camera during the time Zara was killed. But, we all know that the story doesn’t end so easily. Keshav digs deeper, with the help of the police- Inspector Rana. He first suspects Prof.Saxena(the Ph.D. guide), who tries to harass Zara. It is then proved that Saxena has a limp and could have never climbed the mango tree on the night of Zara’s death.

He then tries to find Sikander, Zara’s stepbrother who happens to be part of a terrorist group in Kashmir. Keshav seeks help from Zara’s father and checks her room for clues. He finds a locker with gunpowder, pregnancy kits and selfies of Sikander with a gun along with Zara who happens to be smiling in the picture. Keshav goes through the clues one by one. He first tries to meet Sikander and asks him about his group called TEJ. Sikander gets afraid and threatnes them with a gun and runs away. They try to reach him out through his mother in Kashmir. Sikander meets them again and tries to explain that he is not the murderer. But with the proper clues, Keshav almost gets convinced that Sikander killed his sister in the fear that TEJ might be known to the Army. The next day Sikander kills himself, telling that his existence would harm TEJ and convince everyone that he killed his dear sister. Keshav is back to square one and realizes he made a mistake of doubting Sikander.

He then thinks about the pregnancy kits and sees a picture of an army official in Kashmir with Zara in her Instagram. After proper investigation, he finds that the army official has gifted Zara expensive jewelry and they raid his house in Delhi. They find the same pregnancy kits and checks his internet history, which has search histories related to abortion and divorce. They also find gold blocks in his house and gets convinced with the theory that he made Zara pregnant and killed her in guilt. They arrange a dinner party to announce the victim and arrest him unknowingly by inviting everyone Zara knew, after the 100th day of her death.

Part 4: The Twist

The story needs a twist. Just before Keshav announces the killer, he goes on a little trip to Hyderabad. This is when he realizes that he was suspecting the wrong person all along.

Reasons to read it

It is not another Indian love story.
We travel with Keshav, who finds justice and also his career path at the end of the book.
The story is not too obvious like other Indian mystery books.
It is best enjoyed as a one time read.

Total time to read it

To read the whole book, the maximum time one person can take is a day or 5 hours in a single stretch. People can read faster, but this is an average time period.

Rate it

I would give a 6 on 10.