Chetan Bhagat: Redefining The Indian Literature

Probably one of the most celebrated authors of the Indian English literature, Chetan Bhagat has been inspiring the young generation of our country with his wide variety of works ranging from fiction to newspaper columns, motivational speaking, and non-fiction genre.

Bhagat successfully completed his B.Tech and MBA from IIT Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad in the years 1995 and 1997 respectively. After being placed as an investment banker in Citibank, he worked there for almost a decade, before quitting to focus on a full-time writing career. Writing, he had once admitted in an interview was something he wanted to do always, even while he was in college.

His first book, 'Five Point Someone' was based on his life in the country’s most reputed engineering college, IIT Delhi. The book which was published in 2004, became a major success, especially among the young people, who became ardent fans of his style of writing. Consequently, his second book, 'One Night @ the Call Centre', released without much delay in the year 2005. The book, based on the story of six friends working in a call center during a night shift, especially impressed  people with the surprise element in its pre-ending. After this, Bhagat took some break from his work, while working on new stories and at the same point for writing columns in The Times of India and Dainik Jagran.

In 2008, he wrote his third book, 'The 3 Mistakes of My Life'. The plot revolves around three friends belonging to middle-class families in Ahmedabad, and conveys their story, as the protagonist shares his experiences and the mistakes that ruined it. Bhagat then came up with his two best works, '2 States: The Story of My Marriage' and 'Revolution 2020' in 2009 and 2011 respectively. While the former is a tale of a love marriage between two people belonging from different states of India and is inspired by his own love story, the latter is a story of a love triangle which discusses the interwoven themes of love, politics, corruption and beyond. His last fictional work till date, 'Half Girlfriend', was published in 2014. Again a love story of two people belonging to two different economic sections of society, the book is known to be his most complex and least appreciated work, mainly because of its lack of originality and unnecessarily exaggerated plot.

He has also published two books in the non-fiction genre, 'What Young India Wants' in 2012 and 'Making India Awesome' in 2015. Both of them contains essays, speeches, and columns which discuss ideas to improve the shape of India in future.

His books have been developed into successful Bollywood movies such as Kai Po Che, Hello, 2 States and 3 Idiots. He has also worked on the screenplay of some Bollywood movies including the blockbuster movie Kick (2015).

Bhagat has therefore spread his writing to various genres and themes. He has been criticised often by people who call his writing style simple and ridiculous and believe that his work lacks imagination. However, his work is almost unanimously praised by the masses, who think that his works have a certain level of understanding of the Indian readers. Chetan Bhagat has therefore undoubtedly achieved his aim of impressing the masses, which he said is what he always wanted.



Written by Avinash Srivastava
A Writer of Stories, Loves Novels and Movies