There’s a show on Star World that I recently got to know about. It puts celebrities in a room with an ardent hater of their work, and a moderator tries to resolve the conflict between them. As expected, the moderator leans towards the celebrity, because why would he do so otherwise? And the celebrity gets the element of surprise advantage over the poor kid who’s on TV for probably the first time. Or at least they make it look that way.
The post-worthy celebrity here is Chetan Bhagat. I’d call him the Justin Bieber of the Indian literary world. Now don’t get me wrong I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Bieber, and there definitely isn’t anything wrong with Chetan. They know their target groups and cater to them. It’s just that they receive too much admiration outside of this group, and that can get on the nerves of people like me who feel that they’re eating away the spotlight of better men.
If you haven’t already watched these clips, do watch them before you read the rest of my post.
Chetan was my hero after five point someone for a while. Having read it right after my standard 10 board exams in a train from Delhi to Chennai, I found his brand of Indian literature refreshing after the heavy stuff we usually come by. His description of the lubricants project undertaken by Hari, Ryan and Alok got me to actually look up basic material in fluid mechanics, and one thing led to another. I’m currently pursuing a Master’s in Aerodynamics and Fluid Dynamics at North Carolina State University, which might not have happened had I not read a paperback novel when I was 15. For that reason, I cannot hate Chetan as much as Roshini does.
But Chetan did not remain consistent. “One night at the call centre” was a sellout. All he wanted was for his books to sell, and he wrote a book which seemed more like a B-grade Bollywood movie. My respect for him dropped a few notches.
With “3 mistakes of my life”, he hit rock bottom. It was more clear than ever that he was only interested in numbers. Formulaic crap which was sure to hit a chord with the moral posing-liberal youngsters. But I grudgingly admitted that his tactic of pricing his book at less than INR 100 was a brilliant move to tackle literary piracy. And the first edition of 3 mistakes did sell 6,00,000 copies in India alone. That’s a -number most Indian authors hit after 3-4 years sales around the world.
This was the point when I felt Chetan was insulting his own intelligence more than anyone else’s. A man with the dream credentials of IIT-IIM owes more to himself than this. One doesn’t become a writer because of bottom-lines; this is one of those hobby-turned-professions which most people would kill for. He got there and screwed it up for himself. His excuse of “Admiration passes, love endures” wasn’t convincing.
Sure, he did make drivers, carpenters, and Madhya Pradeshi boys who studied in Hindi-medium schools all their lives pick up English novels. Thank you Chetan; only you could have done that.
But why call him a youth icon among the urban crowd then? A Bhojpuri movie is meant to be ghaati and is made for people who like ghaati stuff. There isn’t anything pretentious about it, and the urbane crowd knows to stay away from them. How are his books any different for us? I feel sad for the boys from Besant Nagar, Greater Kailash and South Bombay who claim that 3 mistakes or one night were good reads. WTF guys?
Luckily, he redeemed himself slightly with “Two States”. Not much intellectual value here either, but it was a good read. Funny, but a little preachy to the point of being annoying. It did seem like it was written by the author of Five Point Someone though. I’ll call two states a time pass book which one can read for hilarity during a bus or train journey. I won’t judge Chetan for this book because I feel he wrote it from his heart, and didn’t feel disconnected like his previous rubbish.
To conclude, I’ll say that being preachy is just him. There’s a hypocrite, a wannabe, and a judgmental prick in all of us, so why not in him?
I did read his short story about the Indian education system and found that annoying because a man with his credentials doesn’t have the right to tell us to settle for second-tier institutions. I have not read “Revolution 2020″ so far, but I might.
That said, kudos to Roshini. I couldn’t have defended my opinion that well when taken by surprise by two seasoned celebrities on TV. Arjun Rampal did make you look like a bitch and Chetan was a patronizing, holier-than-thou douche bag when he said you haven’t found love in your life. He used Satyagraha against you later and that will help him sell more books. Good for him. But don’t be too hard on yourself, you were magnificent for someone who (I’m assuming) was taken by surprise and has never been on TV. If you’re reading this Roshini, do send me an email or at least comment here. I’d love to talk to you.
I’ve found my peace with Chetan; it’s just that he’s been blown out of proportion, and that’s our own fault. He is masturbation when it comes to Indian literature. You have to go through him before you get to Kiran Desai or Salman Rushdie. Just don’t masturbate all your life, because that is just sad.
