So our beloved writer and author of the masses Mr Chetan Bhagat is back with his new novel, albeit this time little faster and with lesser publicity, unlike his earlier books. His new novel is named ’2-States, The Story Of My Marriage’.
This story is supposed to be his own story, starting in his college days and culminating into his marriage at the end of the book. All the upheavals which he went through in this period, has been put into the book as a story to the readers. So the story is a simple one. It’s the story of more than two-third of lovers in India who dare to love someone against the wishes of their parents, but finally make it to the ultimate destination called ’Marriage’. But in this story there are some more ups and downs because of the fact that the girl and the boy are from two different states and hence from two completely different culture.
In fact when you read the book, sometimes you get a feeling that the story is less about two lovers dying to become soul-mates and more about the ways of making a Tamilian family possibly accept a punjabi family and vice-versa. And as we all know Mr. Chetan Bhagat is married and has two kids, end of the story is anybody’s guess. Overall it’s a nice novel, definitely better than his last novel, which he named, and meant too, the biggest mistake of my life.. or something similar.
The story goes as follows. Krish and Ananya meet each other in their college and gradually find themselves to be made for each other (ofcourse after some sex escapades, as is very natural in CB novels). They decide to get married after graduation. But they realise that since they are from different States, and different cultures, their parents may not accept this relationship easily. So they decide to make their parents meet each other on the convocation day. And there starts the love-hate story between the parents. The swords get drawn and then the entire story beyond this point is about how they managed to get the parents get along and accept each other. Quite a plain vanilla story.
Pros of the novel:
It’s a typical Chetan Bhagat novel, hence it embodies all the traits of his writing, an easy going, smooth and easy to understand language. Another typical trait of his writing is his funny one-liners. This book is full of such punchlines, which make you feel happy and light throughout the novel. Look at some of them:
“All old women wore as much gold as their bodies could carry and silk saries shiny as road reflectors.”
“one good thing about banking is that you don’t feel bad about lying at all”
“Ananya’s eyebrow’s went up and stayed there as she did not know how to react”
“And with this Ananya’s father tucked half his hand into my underwear. I wondered if a groom can sue his father-in-law for molestation”.
And many more.... The wedding episode is especially funny. I truly enjoyed it.
First person narration of events gives the protagonist the liberty of being present in all the scenes. Then the continuous churning out of ideas from his mind and resulting funny one liners keep you smiling throughout the book, no matter how serious the event is. One more better thing in this novel was his cutting down on the masala stuff related to sex and stuff surrounding it. (May be because of the fact that he has called it his own story and unless you are sitting in the chair of “Sach Ka Samna” no one will like to shout about one’s personal life in public). Overall it’s a good book you can go for it. Last but not the least, the book is pretty cheap by any standards. It costs only 95 bucks.
Cons of the book:
The bad part of the book is, again, nothing but the typical Chetan Bhagat style writing. The moment you see a younger sibling of the girl, you can guess that the hero is going to be the tutor of the boy/girl. There are some impractical and unbelievable parts in the story which, I believe could have been changed or removed. He has the same way of presenting humour to the readers. The only way he does so is make the protagonist keep talking to himself in his mind and giving special comments on almost everything. I think Chetan should think of something different now. At some places you may feel that the story drags a bit more.
But overall I would call this book a good read, atleast once. You will enjoy it.