Picked it up out of curiosity, as I am myself a B.Tech student from IIT Kanpur, eager to learn how IIT Delhi was similar/different from my college.
Found it okie-dokie, but highly un-impressive. Must say, the writing style of american-teen novels(Agatha Christie/Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew) is much better than Mr.Bhagat’s.
Why even the hindi-belt crime thrillers available at north-central India’s railway/bus stations are much more lucidly written with a firm plot(like Wardi Wala Gunda etcetra)
Chetan Bhagat’s books might have made a tiny-whiny difference to the reading habits of young Indians, as claimed by the entrenched marketers of our country, but has he really made a difference? Is there any empirical research, any numbers to prove this pronouncement? I doubt.
Credit must go to Mr. Bhagat to team up with the publishers to offer 69/-Rs, 59 /-Rs thin English books(hardly 50 pages with font size of 15+), a thin book definitely looks less menacing& more inviting to the non-reading public, folks who get enticed to give it a read to boast among their colleagues about having finally read a book(i.e apart from their regular course books).
Mr. Bhagat’s simple Hinglish narration, easy to understand lines, with no need for any dictionary, where the subjects deal with everyday banters of school-college city life of today’s India, all these does appeal to a non-serious first timers. But does his book leave any lasting impression? Who knows!
Marketing success. YES. No doubt! He is the most sold Indian author! Eternal success& everlasting fame?! You must be kidding us!
His books would be forgotten& buried long before he retires. They would sit along old-books dump to be recycled back for newsprint, ’cause he isn’t a gifted writer!
India has a rich literary scene is all vernacular languages& Queen ’s English, penned by gifted scholars& translated into English/Hindi by equally gifted scholars. Timeless stories which are soaked to our mileu, created by men of genius. Go immerse in them& search your own salvation.
Few of them for ready reference: English(R.K.Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand, Khushwant Singh, Salman Rushdie, Amitava Ghosh….) Bengali- translation in English available(Tagore, Ashapoorna Devi, Shirshendu Mukherjee, Sharat Chandra….) Hindi-translation in English available(Rahul Sanskrityayan, Premchand, Shivani, Dharamveer Bharati….) Marathi(Shiwaji Sawant…….)& the list goes on!
I don’t have any personal vendetta against him, he is after all an IITian& an IIM alumnus, but come what may, he is not a gifted writer! He tries& writes in MS-Excel/Powerpoint type, like typical Business students& try to pass it on as his creation. Not for me& surely I won’t recommend them to any o