I pre-ordered Chetan Bhagat’s latest 5th novel a month back from Flipkart at Rs.80, and I received my copy yesterday, and I being a fan of him, not able to stop myself from being reading it, and I started, and guess what I created a record, of reading any novel so fast. I started reading at around 7 PM and just few minutes back, finished it. Yes the novel was gripping, although predictable, but much better than the usual stuff other CB-follower self-proclaimed Indian writer wrote, they just wrote love story, and fix the events in between them to support it, but CB wrote love story and mixes other events well enough to stand ahead in the line.
About the book and the author - Chetan Bhagat is a name in Indian writing, which everybody is aware of, be it his arrogance-related issues, fight over movie’s credits, many tweeting comments, but best known for his books, had 4 books released prior to this one, and all are best-sellers, since he was the pioneer of writing the love, and touched India with his simple down-to-India novels. His first book was the best one till date, "Five Point Someone", which was made into a great successful Bollywood movie too named ’3 Idiots’. His weakest book was ’One Night @ Call Center’. He has touched emotions and humor well, 2 of his books including ’2 States’ and ’5.someone’ were more on humor quotient, while ’one night’, and ’3 Mistakes’ were more on emotional quotient. This book was on emotion side. This book costs me Rs.80 at Flipkart, goes on for 296 pages, divided over 42 untitled chapters, a kamal19ue and an epilogue. The book’s tagline says "Love.Corruption.Ambition".
The story - It’s a story of 3 friends - Gopal, Aarti and Raghav. They lived in Varanasi, Gopal being the shortcut types, who has an ill father (by health), and a poor background, while the other two comes from healthy families. Gopal loses everything - his father, his lands, his education, even after getting admissions to Career Path Coaching center (name derived from the real institute named Career Point) of Kota for preparing for IIT JEE and AIEEE. But one fine day he met a corrupt politician named Shukla ji, and do big on the grounds of money, for making his own college on his disputed land, in the process bribing everybody, from UGC officials to AICTE inspectors. But he never become like a good Raghav, who instead having a good money background, likes to do big in Journalism, and want to support truth always, and wanted to bring a change to this India by 2020. In between both lays a girl Aarti, who liked Gopal as best friend, but soon came near to Raghav, in middle again dragged towards Gopal. So, who wins her (In this story, only Gopal is fighting for Aarti, Raghav never did that), is the climax alongwith the future of our rRajeev_Vermactive characters.
Pros - Gripping novel, I read 296 pages in just few hours (around 21 hours which include sleeping in the night and all my daily works too:P), the language is simple, as will always be in all CB’s novel. I am a big fan of CB, and owns all his books in my collection, and this time also he didn’t disappointed me. It talks about the current hot issue of corruption-cum-education business, which we saw in ’Aarakshan’ movie too. The book cater an ambitious dream of freeing India from its corrupt image, in middle it was looking like it is going the ’Raajneeti’ way, but CB pulled it back nicely during climax. No humor here, but an emotional touch and I liked the climax, as it bring some tears to my eyes.
Cons - Well, now-a-days these kind of books are becoming predictable, exceptions are there in Amish, and Ashwin Sanghi, but still CB held his head high in this swarming flood of self-called Indian love writers. For the first time he featured love-triangle, and yes the book is not upto the mark that his earlier novels attend in my eyes, I’ll put this book 4rth after ’5.Someone’, ’2 States’, and ’3 Mistakes’. But its always good to read him after so much time. He is not rushing his novels like Durjoy Dutta, but he can write better, and look to read good stories from him in future, yes he did boast about himself in the novel in the kamal19ue, that could be avoided. This novel has se* related scene, like CB’s other novels but this time, its a milder one, he didn’t explained it much like he did it earlier, here and there 4-5 times bad words are used for politician’s mouth.
I will say, read the book, if you don’t want, don’t buy, but read it once. My take 3.5/5.
GRuchirG.
Jai Ram ji ki :)