REVOLUTION 2020

So, “India’s paperback king” (according to The Guardians) has come out with his fifth—Revolution 2020—a novel about Love-Corruption-Ambition!

It’s indeed a long way for Chetan Bhagat, “A rockster of Indian publishing” (again, to quote The Times of India), since his first Five Point Someone back in 2004 to Revolution 2020 in 2011…definitely it’s a long way, considering he has “devoted his entire time to writing and make changes happen to the society”, surely he must have been considered himself to be a serious whole time Writer than he first decided to make the initial drafts of Five Point Someone.

Well, I am not a full time critic, I review Chetan’s Books mainly because I started to develop a zeal for his writings since I read his first novel Five Point Someone, but to my utter frustrations, Chetan started to disappoint me personally since then, including his latest.

Revolutions 2020 deals, as the subtitle indicates, with “Love, Corruption and Ambition”.

A few things have started to remain common with most of his novels since the massive success of his first one…there is a love plot personally told by the chief protagonist(s) directly to Chetan Bhagat, the writer, incorporated with a few social and economical and relatively current issue references that  has happened to the country in recent past.

Take consideration of One Night @ the Call Centre (2005) and The 3 Mistakes of My Life (2008)—where, in both the Stories, the Narrator or the Hero or the Chief Protagonist (what- ever you prefer to call it) disclose their own life Stories directly to Mr. Chetan Bhagat, well knowing that he is a famous and well read novelist! Chetan just jotted down their Stories never stopping to mention that he is the Chetan Bhagat!  

And, the same method is repeated even in Revolution 2020, where Gopal, the young Director of a Private Engineering College in Varanasi gives an account of his life-history and his frustrating tensed relationship with his childhood friends Raghav and Aarati to “Chetan-ji” (who has come to inaugurate the MBA coaching class in Gopal’s College) after being admitted to Hospital after a black-out due to some over-dose of Whiskey. Sound familiar, no? Well, here is a clue… Chetan’s earlier venture The 3 Mistakes of My Life had started in almost a similar fashion…! Can’t you think of some different approach of composing your stories now, Chetan?

And don’t you feel that you are rather being too much obsessed with your identity and always trying to make us remember forcefully that you are the Chetan Bhagat—“The Biggest-selling English-language novelist in Indian History” (well, to quote The New York Times this time!!) Well, Chetan, we all are quite aware that you are probably the most widely read novelist of recent India, but please stop teasing us with that statement all the times! Beating your own drums most of the times sound ridiculous…you know! And believe us, it’s embarrassing too!!

Surely there are a few burning issues like the Political Scams, No-Bribe-No-Work-Custom in almost every Government Sectors including Education System, Corruptions and people with guts to protest against all these mal-practices almost singlehandedly…but to be honest, they all seem loose-tagged and somewhat imposed!

In One-Liner Revolution 2020 is a novel, to be read once, and then forget all about it.

Oh! I almost forgot to mention, like all his earlier four novels Revolution 2020 too have a few passionate bed-scenes—a thing that has become a norm in all Chetan Bhagat novels!    

I’m really wondering friends whether I should e-mail a link of this Blog-Post to info@chetanbhagat.com, not because I didn’t feel pleasure enough reading his novels any longer; or not because I had some intentions of letting a successful novelist inform that he is writing crap these days….but ONLY because I believe from the core of my heart that the creator of Five Point Someone still has potential enough to amuse us once again with a few more masterpieces. May be, it’s just a change of style and a little brain-storming that he needs!

You have really increased our expectation levels Chaten, especially after your Five Point Someone! Please, don’t dishearten us with your next one.