Summary

The excerpt from the novel How to get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid begins with the narrator warning against falling in love. He claims that falling in love is an obstacle in the path of a successful career. 

The narrator is a teenage boy who falls in love with a pretty girl. He sees her on his way to work every evening. She works in a beauty salon. The pretty girl is popular with other boys of the narrator’s age as well, although she is not traditionally beautiful. 

The narrator works at a DVD store which sells pirated DVDs. He distributes the DVDs to customers by bike. The pretty girl speaks to the narrator one evening, asking him to give her a popular movie to watch. The narrator steals a DVD from the store and gives it to the pretty girl a couple of days later. 

The narrator wants to impress the pretty girl, so he asks his neighbor, who used to be a bodybuilder, how to increase his body mass. The neighbor tells the narrator to eat more protein. However, protein is expensive and rarely available in the narrator’s household. The narrator secretly buys an extra packet of milk to drink every day.

The pretty girl returns the DVD to the narrator. When the narrator tells her ...