(A revised, lesser cold and more satiric re-write of this article can be read at http://newsthatmattersnot.com/2011/06/chetan-bhagat-a-ripped-apart-author-review.html )
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The universe is all for equilibrium. Everywhere. And to compensate for certain things I passionately love like Tiramisu, the Blues scale and my 50mm f/1.8 prime, there are disconcerting dimensions like idiots, pretentious cretins and Chetan Bhagat (CB <-) with his paperback atrocities. Both these facets, of dependance and dislike deserve their degree of dedication. Here's one to something I don't quite fancy.
So like 5 years back, I bought this book called 5 point someone (FPS, for brevity and the horror the full name now instills). It would be interesting to find out what not to do at IIT, I had thought, disregarding any hints given off by a tasteless book cover and font (size, type and colour, in their triadic disharmony), inside and outside. That is not to say that I did not give the book a chance to change the impression it made initially.
FPS, which till then was gaming parlance to me, soon left my linguistic inventory, never to come back.
This is not a book review. Nor is this a critique. Its an introspective account of my regret at having crossed paths with FPS. Why does it bother me? Because reading a bad book is something you can never undo. It takes a part of you away, not to mention a handsome amount of time spent reading it (which thanks to Bhagat's bourgeois grammar, pleonastic sentence formation, redundant thoughts and humdrum language, was not that significant a factor here). And if I could spare myself the leisure of quoting from real literature, "I'm here to bury Chetan, not to praise him."
It definitely was, and is, and judging by his choice of themes to portray and complexity of thought (rather the lack of it) all his future works too will be, aimed at the masses, incontestably mercenary. And that always comes at the cost of quality. The one and only good facet to it is that it makes those people take up books who would never have, otherwise. It's disheartening though that most of them don't go beyond the horizons of Bhagatitude. And it becomes the cul-de-sac of their reading experience.
I started off with the book, without any hopes, and mindsets, for it was almost just out at that time without a lot of reviews. For which I am glad, else the hope they would've conjured would lead me to a greater disappointment, leading to a more acrid response on my side.
I did not finish reading the book. Nor did I read any thing else by him. I could not convince myself to. Predictability is flirtatious, but my encounters with books had armed me to extrapolate the storyline of the only disappointment I happened to lay my hands on. The language and style(?) of writing made sure I content myself with the calculated guesses. Eighty odd pages into it, I took the nearest exit, silencing the impressive narration of a teenager beginning to pen his inner voice, often running out of ink, often running out of thoughts.
Being specific for a while, I would like to mention :
His books are NOT works of literature by any means. Period.
They are NOT novels either, by any norms of novel writing, and I can debate on that and dismember any argument you could try conjuring in his favour.
His works are short of comic books due to a visible lack of speech bubbles, also devoid of any form of imagery (which comic books are best known for, albeit literal), also the most basic virtue of a novel. Not to mention the meek namesake of a storyline.
The character names do not go beyond the most unimaginative, common Indian names.
The humour is not even borderline seasoned, or remotely satiric. It is at its best, anecdotal.
I personally did NOT want to be ANY character from his book (which again is the least an author's imagination should incite), and I don't really think anyone would.
4 books down, the quality of work is still the same, which in his case, is not something one should pride in.
The sneak peek to the story behind the book is a peep show I would choose to avoid. It shows the wrong kind of flesh to my liking.
He single handedly brings down the average quality of Indian writers. And there are avant garde authors as opposed to our very own enfant terrible of epiphanous trite in writing.
The detailing is pretty much anti-LOTR, and the scenes bask in a negative space of non existence.
I don't fully gather to what effect do people associate his name to their experience in reading. "I love to read" they tend to touch up with "my favourite author is CB". And that takes away any regard I might have had. Because for him to be your favourite, he also has to be your only. Along with him now come a myriad of other authors, producing story books that flood the now unfriended-neighbourhood bookstores. Some of them might be better than the others, no denying that. But when I enter the store with my wish list in mind, and hopes mounting like the notes in a mental whistle, and have to realise that CB is the "in thing", ergo they did not risk/bother getting copies of the well writ brethren of books, I cannot be expected to keep my calm.
Shashi Tharoor leaving the editorial of TOI left me shattered and it took me a couple of weeks to muster the incentive of picking up the Sunday TOI. And then, under the column name of "The underage optimist" comes along CB. The shock made me skip even certain Jugular Vein and Second Opinion articles by the wonderfully simple and satiric Jug Suraiya, lest I have to glance across CB smearing his monotonous "optimism" across an otherwise delectable spread of articles that make my Sunday enjoyable.
Why people enjoy his books is because they relate to it in some regard, I guess. The commonplace drudgery or the joy one finds in the anecdotal staccato of intermittent ups and downs of life and its portrayal in the linguistic equivalent of a tramp.
It instills, like I mentioned at the start, horror at the realisation that the youth is holding CB as their standard for reading. Being generous, I would not deny it as maybe an occasional accompaniment to an otherwise thorough and elegant bookshelf, but it cannot be the definitive identity of anyone's reading habit. One man's riches should not come at the cost of a million people's acceptance of mediocrity. To the extent that New York Times called him "the biggest selling English language novelist in India’s history". Kudos.
I'm sure although that the next trip home too, like every other trip anywhere, will have yet another traveller looking intently into a CB book. For his benefit, I hope he moves on.
And so does everyone else with anything CB.
Because CB does not translate to "C'est bien".
And life is too short for a bad cup of coffee or mediocre writing.
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