Revolution 2020

Chetan Bhagat, the superstar of Indian ‘time-pass book’ writing, has always been severely accused for the lack of concern for the language he employs in his book. It is not the language alone; for a long time he has been criticized for stripping the art out of the writing and marketing the content with sex and toilet jokes. Yet, like any superstar, how much ever critics trash him, he sells!

The only possible question that ensues is – ‘how?’ 

Does it really matter – ‘how’? It may matter for people who have tried to emulate him: some successful, some not. But why should we bother about the intricate details of his success story? Yet we do – don’t we? In a society damned by inequalities, if one were to analyze the type of readers/ audience for any art-form here, it would come to the purview that there are two kinds of people out there: one who is enthralled by what is being said – the fresher & other by how it has been said – that’s us. That is why we bother about the intricate details of his success story – with all his clichés how did he click?

To answer that, Chetan depends on the familiarity of the tale – the very tale that had been pushed down the drain as cliché – to spread his opinions/views. One might call him the local author who decrypts the foreign authors for the bereaved bourgeois who never bothered about the basics. But he doesn’t preach philosophy either. Instead, he successfully entwines some common sense and a bit of philosophy/psychology to the readers through his characters that start out as losers.

However, for someone who wants to bring about a revolution within his target audience & India on the whole through the likes of Raghav’s pink coloured newspaper, his forte still lies in romance. The way he chiseled the character of Gopal – who comes off as someone who could write a book on how a girl would react, yet clueless as to how to convince them – is a touch of a master. There are glitches towards the end, as the book unfolds itself to melodrama by the drama king Gopal; not to forget the narcissism that is increasingly eminent in Chetan’s book, with every important character treating him as God and he in return teaching them Gita like Krishna. Yet, for portraying a romance that transcends the boundary of faith & infidelity, it really is a revolution for the target audience.


A part of this article appeared in THE HINDU - NXG

2 states: the story of my marriage

Author: Chetan Bhagat

Krish confesses to Ananya that he wants to be a writer who tells stories that are fun, but bring about change too; and sure enough Chetan (on whose life this book is also based on) has done the same till now with his witty tales which has made India read like never before. Having followers who mostly fall under the first time reader cadre, Chetan uses the curiosity factor of the common man who will die to read any tiny gossip column on celebrities, to openly share his life, treading on a path which dangerously borders cliché and boredom to pull off another successful book solely based on the lines he uses which mysteriously makes us engaged even though we get the main story and some of the sub plots (like how his father is going to be his saviour and so on) and also what message (yes! we have a message here!!) he is going to tell us, at the beginning itself.

Having such diverse readers, Chetan fully realizes his reach and offers something for everyone to relate to and not stopping, plays with it to create witty humours around it; like how he proclaims the tininess of Ananya’s mole near her lips has nothing to do with the space it occupies in his thoughts and how it figuratively displays a full stop when he wants to kiss her.

From the teaser to the prologue which vehemently tells this is all about how two communities faces difficulties to understand each other and when you start to realize half way through, that it is going to end like this and as the fan inside you feels sad as to why resort to cliché for preaching people that we should unite as a nation to great extent, that Krish himself makes fun of the line that they need to make love only for the sake of uniting the nation, he springs up a surprise when Ananya father says, “it’s not about communities. It’s about the kind of people we want to be with”.

Staying true to the disclaimers in his acknowledgment, Chetan shares with us a detailed study on Madrasi(as used in the book), from their affinity to The Hindu even in a marriage hall with the remark – they loved knowledge irrespective of whether they ever used it; to the tough notes in “minsara kanna” song of ‘Padayappa’; to discussing the freedom and aura of woman in south from north Indian point of view in harsh way with reference to Sridevi and Jayalalitha and he uses the funniest situations to establish his characters, like how Ananya, while tearing a piece of chicken leg, explains to Krish about the cultural values of her community and of krish’s as he tells to leave the price tags on the gifts.

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Neeta goes through Krish’s case file and reads out an excerpt; “patient has sleep deprivation, has cut off human contact for a week, refuses to eat, has Google-searched on best ways to commit suicide.” She even utters the word curd rice, prodding him. He breaks down and banters racist remarks towards the south Indian. Neeta like any good physiatrist (or psycho as referred to) prompts him to start from the root cause – the first meet.

And this is how Chetan Bhagat with the tagline “the biggest selling english language novelist in India’s history – New York Times” unveiled the cover page and prologue of his fourth novel through internet, a rom-com with more stress on com this time around, retracing his path from a serious writer that he had established through “The three mistakes of my life”, to his “Five point someone” days; more so, as this again is based on his life (no the IIT days), but the love between a north Indian and a south Indian.

Chetan, who has always tried to imbibe a lot of positive energy through his intentionally simple writing style; which has till now explored the complex world through his characters horizontally; avoiding the grey shades, sets out to take us through the lives of Krish and Ananya from their first meet till they succeed in marriage by convincing their orthodox families and making them like each other in what might prove to be a comedy of errors that would end in a happily ever after, interspersed with a message; the message a guy surrounded by a cloud representing the state of Punjab attempting to connect with a girl surrounded by the cloud of Tamil Nadu wants to give through “ 2 States – the story of my marriage” this Diwali.