Chetan Bhagat

When you name your novel Revolution 2020, one expects a kind of soul searching, revolutionary story about a country that needs a change more than ever. But, Revolution 2020 never even comes close to that. Instead, it becomes a highly clichéd love story which has nothing to do with revolution whatsoever. You almost feel that Bhagat wanted to cash in on the Anna Hazare movement against corruption. To say that the story is extremely shallow might be the understatement of the year.

Two boys try show more to get into IIT/NIT in order to become engineers. Bhagat implies it on every page that it’s either IIT/NIT or bust. If you cannot get into IIT/NITs, the only option left is private colleges or to become a watchman (Seriously, he wrote that). Does Bhagat even know the admission procedure in engineering colleges of India? There are engineering colleges in India which even though are not NIT/IITs are government funded and quiet reputable (In some cases, even as good as the NIT/IITs). And the admission procedures are centralized state wise. If you cannot even crack that, then and then only private colleges come into the picture. He seemed to brag about himself in the first couple of pages by listing his achievements in the dragged form of a story if ever there was one. He even tells that, in general, if someone does Btech in India, he/she compulsorily wants to do an MBA too. Why Mr. Bhagat? No Mtech? Not anything else? Oh we get it. Because you did the same. And that is the only option, right? Chetan Bhagat might be the least knowledgeable author this country has ever produced. I wonder if he has even read more than 10 good books in his life. Because his stories do implicate that these are the most under researched works of literature ever to come out of India.

To sum up the story, the main character Gopal loves his childhood friend Aarti who in fact loves their common friend Raghav. As we are in Bhagat’s universe, Gopal becomes a major failure just because he couldn’t crack the IIT/ NIT entrance examinations. So he naturally turns corrupt and becomes successful. On the other hand, Raghav starts dating Aarti and gets his engineering degree and turns a reporter, because hey, it is mandatory that you need to be a reporter to change the world, right? And Aarti might be one of the silliest characters ever to come out of fiction in recent times. Her character has even lesser depth and understanding than a 10 year old; that is, if a 10 year old is mentally challenged. What will become of them in the end? Believe me, you wouldn’t care. There is no depth to the story. Chetan Bhagat has sleep walked through the entire story and I guess it’s only fair if you would do the same. As I said earlier, he is the least knowledgeable published author to come out of India in the recent past. His books about his own life, “Five Point Someone” and “2 States” were good, but when he tries his hand at a total fictional work, which requires total imagination, he fails drastically, which alas, I am sorry to say, is not a good thing for a writer of fiction. show less

Chetan Bhagat tries his hand at detective fiction with The Girl in Room 105 and does an average job. After starting off the same way as many of his previous novels, this one follows a different path, thankfully. Zara, a typical Chetan Bhagat heroine, is murdered and Keshav, her loser of an ex-lover-who-still-loves-her, turns amateur detective trying to find the killer. He is helped by his fat, funny best-friend, who also teaches in the same competitive exam coaching centre where he teaches, show more and an indulgent policeman.
Though Bhagat has tried to shift genres, his characters and certain plot elements remain quite similar to those of his other works. I am not a Bhagat-basher and I found parts of this quick moving novel entertaining, and liked it better than his previous couple. show less

I was delighted to pick up a rare copy of this book in the UK and raced through it in 2 days flat. I loved it for its straightforward, humorous style, and while the synopsis threatened something uncomfortably religious, it’s not. (It’s religious in the sense that Yann Martel’s “Life of Pi” is religious I’d say).

As the title suggests, the story takes place over one night and is set in an Indian call centre, the sort of place I’ve been dealing with recently in connection with a show more Kodak printer I unwisely bought. It was fascinating – offshore call centres are so unpopular here it’s a positive selling point if a company doesn’t use them – and don’t get me started on the ones that cold call you with bogus ‘surveys’..... And yet all the time we know these are real people doing tough jobs on the other side of the world. Here in this book is their viewpoint and their world, a world of the idiot boss and nasty mother-in-law, a world of high tech and growing nationalism. They don’t like those bogus Western names any more than we do, and they are unashamedly scornful of their American “clients” (I particularly liked the ‘35-10 rule’). I’m going to be much nicer to those guys from Kodak in future but I still wish I had never bought the flipping printer. show less

Reading this made me realise that my taste in books is awful, it was like I was binging on this book while being aware of how poorly written it is and how lousy the plot is. BUT it was funny at times - specifically, Chetan Bhagat's observation of life in India (things like how chaotic the news debates are, the corruption, random hypocrisy of the men who act all high and mighty but are just leeches).
In terms of the plot - Keshav comes of as a total loser. I don't get why they added that his show more parents are affiliated with the RSS, that added nothing to the plot. The whole interfaith angle, with Zara being a Muslim, too, felt like it was added for some masala. I'm not even going to get into the Kashmir and the guns angle, it felt like I was reading a pulp novel.
Yet, I read this book quickly to find out the ending so I won't complain too much. I get why he's one of India's top authors, these masala novels are pretty easy to read. show less