Half Girlfriend: Why young India looks upto Chetan Bhagat
Half Girlfriend, Rupa, Rs, 176
Chetan Bhagat is more than a novelist now. He's a one-man Google Map for a new generation that wants to make it big, without restrictions of geography or genealogy. For Bhagat, that is both a blessing and a limitation. From being the chatty friend of his first few books, he has gradually morphed into a guru, genial and accessible, who shows the neo middle class that anything is possible. Always an acute social observer, he has become a top notch anthropologist of our times, exploring themes as diverse as the desire to learn English, the crisis in urban Indian masculinity and the limitations of working for other people, especially rich people.
It limits his writing - he cannot afford to be downbeat, though much of life is. But that is a minor complaint. Bhagat, the star speaker, social media czar, and prolific writer of zeitgeist, has crafted yet another novel that reflects the times we live in. There is not a single aspect he misses of a young India on the move. There is the young Indian male trying to understand the young Indian woman (why don't they teach us how to talk to girls, says the young male protagonist, Madhav, at one point).
He sees his fellow student and baskteball enthusiast Riya through the prism of sex initially. Deti hai to de, nahin to kat le, he says at one point, horrifying her with her crudeness. The war between the two sexes, at its peak now, with men thinking women want them only for their money, and women thinking men want them only for sex. Bhagat, with his romantic view of life, and his emphasis on gender equality (it isn't just lip service for him, he is after all a stay-at-home dad) genuinely believes in happily ever after. He knows the hunger for love among young people, how they will do anything for it.
They will also do anything to learn English. For Madhav, a minor prince from Dumraon, Bihar, who makes it to the tony St Stephen's College on a sports quota, English is an embarrassment. It shrivels his dreams and turns his confidence to dust. He tries to learn it, with not much success, unless he absolutely has to make a speech in English to a visiting dignitary (spoiler alert: it's Bill Gates in a cameo).
Set largely in rural India, Bhagat also does a Narendra Modi in the book - showing the possibility of what young Indians can do for young India. Madhav turns his back on a corporate job to work for his school in Dumraon. Predictably, it has 700 children in three shifts but it doesn't have a toilet. It is run by his mother, Rani Sahiba, who is running low on energy and funds. Madhav has a plan for it, which is as audacious as it is simple. He also has an unfulfilled ambition to marry Riya, the woman of his dreams. As usual, Bhagat's women are feisty and independent, even if they travel in their dad's BMWs and their boyfriend's Bentleys.
From Dumraon to New York, from St Stephen's to Dumraon Royal School, Bhagat's Half Girlfriend is part self help guide on how not to quit, part anthem for new Bihar, and part manifesto for Modi's India, which covers everything from building toilets in schools to ending up in Madison Square Garden.
Read it, quickly, before the movie is out.