On a lazy Saturday afternoon, during the Diwali weekend, I saw this book lying unread on our bookshelf. Chetan Bhagat is an author who did huge waves with the launch of his first book, however book after book have been thrashed. There is something about CB and numbers.
Half Girlfriend
There is a lot of criticism floating around for Chetan Bhagat. I think part of it is well deserved as well! However, you cannot deny the genius of the guy.
In this book, he tells the story of how a Prince from Bihar who albeit cannot speak a single sentence of English gets admitted into St. Stephen’s College in Delhi and how he falls in love with a girl from an upper class family.
There are other ingredients added to the masala as well, about how our protagonist strives to learn English and earn a living for his family (and his village). The great divide brought on by language is interesting … this is the point where the author’s genius shows. At one point in the story, the heroine of the novel suggests reading Chetan Bhagat’s novels as a way of improving English!
Subliminal messaging Product Placement at it’s best. Add to it assurance to the reader and correctly identifying the target audience. Clearly these books are not targeted towards me and you too!!
This is why, you cannot really blame CB for the book. If you don’t like it, move on, they were not for you anyway!
I liked the book, it’s a light read where you do not have to think, you just keep flipping pages and enjoy the mental torture our hero faces during the course of this book.
Epilogue
Whatever we might want to say about CB.
The elitists will hate him, the journalists will herald him as the new educator of the country and the script writers will thank him, but we can never deny the fact that –
Deti hain to de, varna kat le
has gone down in the echelons of literature as Chetan Bhagat’s tribute to Indian romance.