All the best Chetan :-)(The writer who made me believe I can write with his Five Point Someone!) As the whole India is gearing to read the much-awaited and much-talked about novel, ‘Half GirlFriend’ written by the Paperback King, India’s Master Storyteller, cited as the biggest selling English language novelist in India’s history by the New York Times, also called as the ‘Sallu Bhai’ of Indian literature and proud bearer of several other such titles to his name, who is none other than Chetan Bhagat himself, somewhere in the south of India there is another author who dreams about his book which has struggled four long years to finally see the day light. Unlike the former the latter has no identity for himself nor does he have any pretext for writing like the former who believes even a child from slum should pick his book. He is just a small town boy with a very big dream of becoming a storyteller someday. And when the day has arrived he surely feels the heat. He is haunted by the same question again and again, will his humble work be noticed in the foray of so much glitz and glamour of the former’s already tagged block buster hit or best seller in the booker’s term. Yes, he had seen the 48 sec teaser of the ‘Half girlfriend’ which rocked the whole nation. Just like any other viewer he himself made 5 to 6 hits impressed by the blurb which tells about Madhav and Riya. In the first go he is stunned to see the overwhelming response to the ‘Half Girlfriend’ against his own promo which hardly reached 250 hits. Then out of natural curiosity he tries to figure out if at all there is any similarity between both the works. But to his dismay he finds that except for the obnoxious titles there is nothing common between the two. ‘Half girlfriend’ can be at least put under some category but when it comes to his own title only God knows how it’s going to be received because the very title of the book gives reason to frown. But what boggles him the most is whether his story set in a small hilly town unlike in a metro as in ‘Half Girlfriend’ will appeal to the readers? Will his simple characterization be any match to the characters created by the Jadhughar, will his straight-from-the-heart plot stand against the commercial plot credited to be the reason behind the success story of six best-selling novels by his counterpart? On top of it there is not even a single smooching or love making scene in his work on the other hand as Riya has accepted to be just Madhav’s ‘Half Girlfriend’ it is going to be one heck of an experience for all the readers because the Master storyteller exactly knows what young India wants. Will the same young India ever find the work with no ‘A’ word or ‘F’ word enjoyable than its counterpart. Will his usual boy meeting girl, old fashioned romantic love story swim against the tsunami tide created by an India-shaking theme like ‘friends with benefit’? Now he doubts whether his 14 year old protagonist Inba, a ‘KVite’ can go anywhere near Madhav of Stefan’s or his nameless deuteragonist can be ever compared with the bold and beautiful Riya, that’s what it looks like from the teaser. All of a sudden another bolt strikes his already not so stable state of mind; the biggest question now is what if his half-baked English which survived the aftermath of one of the godforsaken colleges as attended by the majority of Indians surrenders to the verbal ability of the product of IIT and IIM. Moreover he is not a high profile person, his street hardly knows him. He is not backed by any sort of media or celebs (no Mohit Suri, no Ekta Kapoor and most importantly no Kriti Sanon!). He just has his words to do the trick but now it looks remotely possible. However despite so much of a ‘tug of war’ between the brain and the heart he is happy to have his baby (it’s actually my book people, for those who think I made someone pregnant!) in his hand and at that moment he forgets everything and wishes the storyteller who inspired him to write and million others to read, along with other creators who have the same lump in the throat as him, a heartfelt congrats in the true spirit of literature, words and books. At the same time with an unbreakable trust in the Indian readers, he caresses the title ‘Law of Jiluk’ and his name below it to feel something special which can be felt only by him.
Posted on: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 00:48:54 +0000