Revolution 2020

Revolution 2020 - Chetan Bhagat
   ... and on Chetan Bhagat in general.

Quite a lot has been said about the publicity strategy of Amish Tripathi's Shiva Trilogy - a youtube video that went viral. I think that though the form is new, the strategy - Internet publicity by a first-time author, targeted for the "intelligentsia" - has actually been put to use much earlier. How many of you heard of Chetan Bhagat, before his first book, "Five Point Someone" was published? Well, I was amongst the ones who did - by virtue of being an IITD alumni - I received a mail on the IIT e-group, announcing the forthcoming launch of his first book - from an IITian, about the IITians. The very fact, and an excerpt from the book, was sufficient to arouse curiosity and interest, and I waited in eager anticipation for the book.

I must say that 'Five Point Someone' lived up to the expectations. I loved it, and so did almost everyone whom I recommended it to. Anyone who has stayed in a hostel, specially in an engineering college, could identify with it; being an alumni of the same college as the novel is set in, I could identify much more with the places and the lingo. By his own admission, Chetan Bhagat didn't have any literary pretensions, but it was definitely a good story. And it naturally created a lot of expectations from his future works.

Then came the second book, One Night @ Call Centre. The bad reviews not withstanding, my hopes/expectations led me to go for it. And what a waste! To say that I didn't like it at all, would be an understatement. And after "Three Mistakes of My Life", I finally gave up on Chetan Bhagat. It appeared that he had stopped writing for the sake of telling a story, and instead started writing in order to make a movie. 

So, when "Revolution 2020" came out, I didn't have any intention of reading it. But some of my friends recommended it quite enthusiastically, so I picked it up for a journey I was making alone (and therefore had time to pass). 

The book is set in the town of Varansi, and traces the journey of its three main characters - two guys and a girl - from childhood to adulthood, as they struggle to decide and achieve what they want from life. There are little successes, and a lot of failures, which is what life usually is. The one who aspires and craves for what he considers "success" is far from it, while  the other who does not want it, wins it easily - the irony of life! The concept/story was good, but the treatment could have been much much better. The tracks that it narrates are quintessentially bollywod. There is the love triangle - both guys love the girl, the fight between mind and heart (money vs principles) - one guy on either side, and the girl is in an unimaginative dilemma. Apart from the melodrama, I found the character of the girl quite badly developed - little more than a prop, and as unpredictable as the cliched college-lore wisdom portrays them.

If the book tried to give us a flavor of Varanasi, well I did not get it. Could it be because I have never even been there? Because, a friend who hails from Varanasi, really loved it and said that it gave her a nostalgia. I think it was much better than the previous two works of his that I read, though not as good as the first one. Is it because his are essentially college stories, and we have outgrown them? I'm not sure I would ever be able to get an answer to these Qs.

All said and done, I still have hope that Chetan Bhagat can be a good writer some day. I loved his first book, and also liked his non-fiction articles that I came across in newspapers or Internet. I feel that the reason his first book was such a success because it was honest, a story he wanted to tell. So if he just tells a story, and stop worrying about the commercializing part (read, making a movie), the commerce part will take care of itself.