Thursday, July 15, 2010

Chetan Bhagat and his stories

I took a break for about 5 days in early this month. It gave me opportunity to do some reading which my normal work schedule deprives me of. I read a couple of books by Chetan Bhagat and a book by Rama Chandra Guha. RCG is a Historian and his book a research into modern history. A reflection of that book is a topic for another blog. I will stay focussed on Chetan Bhagat.

Everyone knows about Chetan Bhagat after the release of the movie 3 idiots.

One of his books is based on his experience in IIT Delhi and another one based on his experience in IIMA. It was easy for me to identify with the characters of the book as I had the good fortune of passing through the portals of IIT and IIM. Some of my observations:

  • Chetan Bhagat gave up the career of a Investment Banker to become a writer.

  • His stories are based on his own experience and hence has sense of conviction.

  • The language he uses is a little foul but that adds authenticity to the novels.

  • The Books are cheap (about ninety bucks each).

  • The humour is superb.

  • You can make money out of your own experience.
Last few days, I have been telling our librarians that it should have the most wonderful collection of all kinds of books. The books entertain, inform, inspire the readers. We must reinvent the habit of reading. Who knows, one day one of our alumni will be great writer, movie director, reformer and what not.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Sir,
We are being allowed to issue only 7 books @ a tym,How can we students issue Novels when we are given such less no. of books to issue.
Can the no. of Books issued be increased in Quantity,so that we students can acquire a lot of Quality books.

nupura said...

Dear Sir,
I read references to RCG, and thought You may be interested in this article - http://nupurablog.blogspot.com/2008/11/denial-of-bharat-beyond-mechanical.html .

It digs a little deeper into history of history, and offers a counter point to colonial basis of a lot of Indian history .

Regards

Anubhav Agarwala said...

sir,
I was told by someone to not to read chetan bhagat novels because they dont leave an impression of you on people who have read alot of higher standard novels but thanks to you that now i can challenge that person on it...

one more thing i would like to ask from you...with due respect to your busy schedule if you could take some time out and share with us your own experiences from your IIT and IIM days...all of us would be pleasured to know about your engineering and management days...