Chetan Bhagat’s New One

The last time I read a Chetan Bhagat book, I sincerely wished he would never write again. But I couldn’t resist when I saw his new book “2 States” at Bangalore Airport. At 95 bucks and with over 2 hours to kill it didn’t seem like a bad idea. It certainly wasn’t. I had a long flight ahead of me – Bangalore – Dubai – London and the only book I was carrying was “the interpretation of murder”. I was through with the book by the time the flight took off from Dubai to London.

Firstly he has stopped thanking Bill Gates for making MS Word, so that he can type his stuff out. He still thanks a lot of people, but its getting better. Secondly I realized something about Mr. Bhagat. He has had an interesting life. And his writing is interesting when it reflects his life. I loved his 1st book “5 point someone”. It had soul. It was based on his experiences at IIT. It was a good read. Something which most Indians under 30 could relate to as they may have gone through the same experiences (in some convoluted form or other) at some point of time in life, even if they may never have and may never will go to IIT. But then there were those 2 “novels” – about call centres and about cricket. They were mediocre to say the least. They were more to suit a Bollywood screenplay requirements rather than a novel.

But with 2 states, Bhagat has redeemed himself, at least in my eyes.

He has written a rather predictable story, and even mentions the mother of all interstate love stories ever made in India, “Ek Duje Ke Liye”, which the movie resembles, albeit if the movie were set in the 21st century rather than 1980’s. It’s more like a EDKL meets DDLJ. The book is very much like watching a Bollywood movie. You know what is going to happen. The hero and heroine walk hand in hand into the lovely sunset and live happily ever after. But it’s the journey that we look forward to. Bhagat has done a really good job of holding the readers attention throughout the book. At no point do we feel like the part between the 1st half and the climax of a Bollywood movie, which has been filmed explicitly for the purpose of making the length of the movie upto mark… the standard 3 hours. The over melodramatic Punjabi mother, the extremely understated tam brams, the modern lifestyle of our generation, the lack of inhibitions, the part where kids suddenly seem more responsible than the parents, the continual dependence that we have on parents, no matter how old we are and above all the underlying “Indianness” of it all.

He has brought out the angst in every upwardly mobile middle class youth in India. The pointlessness of our jobs and lives, the tendency to give more importance to our baggages than necessary, the search for love, the guilt trip that we undergo every time we do something fun – maybe because we didn’t deserve it or because it was not “how we were brought up”, the “chalta hai” attitude towards problems in life, everything.


The fact that he is not trying to be artsy with his writing, which according to some may render his work as pop-trash, is exactly the thing that draws my generation and may be a couple of generations under me to this guys writing. Not everyone can be a star, though everyone wants to be one. By star I don’t just mean a movie star. Some want to be movie stars, some want to be star Singers , some want to be star CEO’s….its as if the whole world took Mariah Carey’s “There’s a hero inside you” too literally. Anyway, this guy’s success makes you optimistic. If he could make it big and write stuff that people actually read and get Bollywood deep pockets to make his writings into movies, then maybe we have a chance too. With blogs and twits and what not, maybe everyone can be a 5 point someone.