Chetan Bhagat – you can either love him or hate, but you sure can’t ignore him.
Cliché?? Maybe..
I initially was in a shock after reading “Five Point Someone”. Come on, I’m a typical South Indian Brahmin and we are notoriously brand conscious where educational degrees, qualifications and employers are concerned. After all, all this to a South Indian Brahmin (not just to a Tam Bram) is what marble flooring is to a Punjabi. (Oops!) I guess I did not pay much attention to the line “what NOT to do at the IIT” on the front cover and was flabbergasted with the idea of booze, fag, dope and s** while studying at IIT, of all colleges. Nevertheless, the contemporary style of narration especially in a language exclusively used by people of my age was appealing and I loved it. Yeah, here was an author who targeted my generation and one to look out for!!
“One Night @ the Call-Centre” was a disaster. I still wonder if what Chetan had in mind and what eventually came out in print are the same. To have Salman and his brothers make a bigger joke on the book was too much to tolerate. My impression of Chetan changed to that of a budding writer who tried to create impact through exaggeration and sensationalization with his wholesome use of pure slang.
Penning “The Three Mistakes of My Life” was a mistake, reading it was a bigger mistake indeed. Cricket, communal riots, politics, making out with a student (who is also the best friend’s sister fortunately or unfortunately), earthquake, adoption, etc etc etc. Phew, I almost wrote to Chetan asking him to reconsider his investment banking profession. Certain topics while writing are like some forbidden fruit; you should have experience and command to carefully manage the aesthetics, based on which the outcome is either crass or has class. It hugely upset me to picture Chetan in the “char din ki chandini” frame and I blamed this book on his inability to handle fame in such overwhelming doses.
Desperate to learn from my own past mistakes, I did not follow up with Chetan’s latest offering i.e. “2 states”. But a book worm is a book worm; I gave in to the temptation at last and could not resist people giving a thumbs-up. Another reason is that my work has been screwing for the past 2-3 months and it has been impossible to peacefully settle down with a book. Bangalore weather has been very teasing lately, it is a royal pain in all the wrong places to sit in front of the computer and pushing the keys away to glory in such lovely weather, when I could be relaxing on a bean bag with a novel and steaming mug of hot chocolate. I grabbed the book at the first opportunity (last friday evening, to be precise) and heaved a sigh of relief two hours later, Chetan is back and with a bang!!
The story of Ananya Swaminathan and Krish Malhotra, based (rather exaggerated) on his own life is an almost-sequel to Five Point Someone. Being the typical South Indian Brahmin girl that I am, I was able to relate with so many incidents in Ananya’s life that it was awesome to kind of read about myself in Chetan’s style of narration. One of my closest friends is getting married in less than 2 weeks and the dreaded topic is almost open at my own place too. With the never ending “love marriage versus arranged marriage” armageddon raging in my head, this book came out at the perfect time and it could not have been better. No, it did not help me decide which was better but I did get a temporary respite by being able to laugh at my own predicament from a third person’s perspective.
Cheers Chetan, this one was good indeed…
