The Bhagat Phenomenon

I recently met Chetan Bhagat at Jaipur Literature Festival and got a chance to attend his sessions as well. Well, it was almost a dreamlike moment for me because he is one author I look up to. Yes, we can discuss my poor taste later.

As far as what I remember, I read my first CB novel when I was in class 10^th.  Trust me I was taken aback by the concept underlined by the book. I had never thought in that manner earlier. His thought process had somewhere made a mark in my life.  Today, I am doing my masters in English Literature and I am still a fan of his books. Or rather it’s better to say that I am a fan of his ideologies. I have read all his books and often keep reading them all over again.

At the literature festival, he said that he doesn’t write anything close to literature. May be I too agree to him somewhere, being a literature student. However, he doesn’t even want to write something which has literary implications. Each of his novels has a message, but people don’t want to look towards the brighter side, they want to put it on the scale of literary criticism.

He has written about secularism, education system, corruption and regionalism too. Isn’t this great? The idea of bringing about a change through his writing is good enough. Yes he writes fun stuff and puts spice of love stories in his novels but that’s what attracts attention. How is the message supposed to spread if the mass doesn’t read his books only? Basically, his books are youth oriented and that’s what the need of the hour is. No college going guy would read a boring narrative which speaks about the reforms required in the education system.

He might not have been able to impress the critics but I can very well say that all his readers are (in some way or the other) impressed and may be who knows some of them have even changed after reading his books. We are a developing nation and somewhat conservative as well. We need not shed away our culture and tradition, however, we must be open to change and adaptive to new customs for our betterment. His work somewhere seeks validation of this change and doing away with the existing bad logics and malpractices.

As a loyal reader, I am a hard core promoter of this Bhagat phenomenon and would continue to brag about his books.