In a nod to the literary trick favoured by this week’s Business Lounge subject, let’s start at the end.
Fifteen years from now, twin teens named Ishaan and Shyam meet a girl named Naya on a non-stop flight from Delhi to Boston.
“Do you believe compassion is the greatest virtue?” Ishaan asks Naya.
“Yes,” she says.
“Well, do you mind sitting in between me and my brother? I can’t stand the middle seat.”
Naya agrees; after all, they are both cute.
“Where are you heading?” Shyam asks.
“Harvard. Freshman year.”
“Us too!” they exclaim.
“Wow,” she says. “Do you believe in god…and fate?”
Over the next 15 hours, they learn that her mother and their father are both writers, one a journalist, another an author. Piecing together a few facts, they realize their parents have even met: One Morning@the India International Centre.
“In May of 2008, after your father’s third book was released,” Naya remembers. “My mother’s first words were…
“I’m a huge fan.”
I met Chetan Bhagat on the day he would launch his new book, The 3 Mistakes of My Life, at a Big Bazaar in Gurgaon.
Yes, Big Bazaar. Right next to the jeans and groceries, priced at Rs95; “it’s an impulse buy,” he says. “But my friends are, like, ‘Big Bazaar?’”
He responds to their chagrin and my first question before I can ask: “I need to reach my readers. And 60% of my emails come from small towns. Sure, Oxford and Crossword are in Delhi, but what about Bhubaneswar?”
Limited vision: Bhagat believes India is not a place for dreamers, but should be. (Illustration: Jayachandran / Mint)
Let’s get the ganging up out of the way. He’s not literary, the critics say. One blog called his style “retarded”. Another accused him of not even being worthy of the literary journal at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi. And, I’ll be honest, most of my friends don’t like his work.
But keep scrolling through comments and the writer’s own website and you’ll come to readers who gush: “m a really big fan of ur writing nd ur books…. d fact tht u r so good bt equally modest makes u a wonderful writer…”
See, the SMS generation ain’t so literary either.
Seconds into our meeting, any presumptions I had that Bhagat’s Delhi roots, coupled with success, might somehow make him, well, pretentious, melted away. We began in the coffee shop, which has no mobile, no camera, no loudness rules, so, before we can even sit down, Bhagat says, “Shall we go to my room? This place is for 70-year-olds.”
He changes into a different shirt for the camera, orders a round of five nimboo paanis and sits down. Never mind that there are only four of us in the room: Bhagat, his mother, me, Mint’s pony-tailed photographer who, I proudly point out, also happens to be an IIT grad.