CHETAN BHAGAT'S HALF GIRLFRIEND : A REVIEW

                                                            “Bhagat is a symbol of new India. A torch-bearer for an unafraid generation…”, says India Today. India’s most loveable pen-pusher, Chetan Bhagat has hit the road once more with his sixth and much awaited  novel Half Girlfriend. Bhagat has spanked a new symmetry with his arithmetical  round-play trifling with numbers again in 1/2 Girlfriend. A prompt beacon inspiring everyone to chase one’s dream is what the novel sets forth in one stretch of light. 

                                         On an individual platform, I had waited long for the month of October, for the prime release of Half Girlfriend. The novel hunts down the visible corners of the themes of friendship, campus, love, family and romance exquisitely knit to placate the voguish trendy current generation. Nevertheless, the novel is much  beyond  what it  ferried  through the embryonic adds, targeted with the marketing strategy. As intellectuals argue, it seems a child’s play alone to pen a simple novel; I agree, but being sagacious enough to write what a reader takes fancy for is something ceremoniously different and Bhagat has forever cracked that to the core. However, the title of the novel, obviously has little to do with the whole plot though it is absolutely allied to the theme. Now, that spins to be mysterious and that is how our wordsmith spurs us to cross the 250 pages of his treatise.

                                             The novel sets in at St. Stephen’s campus - New Delhi, where the run of the mill Bihari Protagonist Madhav Jha meets his love Riya Somani who hails from a Marwari deep pocketed family of Delhi. The story shoots down the ever mystifying network of love held between two individuals clinging on to two contrasting classes coupled with the intricacies of a native Indian to conquer the universal language - English. Born in a village ambiance, Madhav finds it hard to cop with the classy English accent customized by his college mates and befriends Riya who tries to restore him with confidence. While  the first  half revolves  in New Delhi, the second half scurries from Bihar to New York. 

                                                 The writer once again intensely ventilates the fact that falling in love is not that plain-sailing. Apart  from Romance, he  criticises the  politicians and the present systems with  his subtle humour. The  zooming  power crisis in  Bihar  and the  paucity  of  mere  rudimentary  provisions  in  schools  are  also  put forward  in  the most  eye-catching   manner.  Apparently, the  book  has touched  many other  realms including  Marriage, Romance, Wealth, Separation, Social Class and above all the delicate observations about humanity. 

                                              Though Bhagat has gratified the Anglophiles by making an ordinary  Bihari  young man striving  to conquer the  mastery of English  language, he  has  also assuaged the common crowd when Riya says “What you say matters, not the language”. However Chetan Bhagat’s comic side stands further blazing when we find the hero bunking his class to meet his girlfriend at her home by proclaiming, “Classes can wait. Love can’t.”  Madhav Jha becomes the mouthpiece of Bhagat when he says with a mischievous smile, “This is what girls do. At crucial moments, they won’t give you a straight answer”. 

                                                     One of the pinnacles of the novel encompasses the fact that  the story is also revealed from the perception of the heroine - Riya, though it surfaces through her diary entries. Moreover, the jigsaw method of gluing the broken contours at the end of the novel too is absorbing. Accommodating  the Microsoft King - Bill Gates, too  takes to shore the crystalline pebbles of the novel. A suggestive hint about Riya’s father was yet again a  valorous stab from the part of the writer since certain gauzy areas are never ever mentioned in the best selling works, especially in India. Riya’s question is very distressing when she writes “If you crush a flower before it blooms, will it ever bloom as bright later?” The pathos of being born as a girl, the double standards, the ever puzzling discord of mother in law/daughter in law  relation  and  many  more  from  Indian scenario, cluster together as the iconic themes in the novel.

                                                        From one perspective, the novel is yet another amusing Bollywood saga and resembles a bit with the movie English Vinglish where one tries to conquer the  convolutedness of English language. In the second half, the story traces fragments of Sanjay Leela Bansali movie “Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam” where the heroine ( Aiswarya Rai) crosses the borders of India in search of her long lost Lover in Italy. All said and done, it will be a flight of fancy if I don’t  evince the entertaining faculty of the writer. You may not, in one glance take  hold  of  the application of Cultural  Theories or  Massive Literature  acclimatised angles ; even then the book is worth one reading to realize the pulse of the younger generation. There are a lot of scenes without logic and credibility along with tons of predictable plan of action. Despite this fact, a modern reader judges it only by the flush of entertainment it offers. However, the story will definitely hold your interest till the end. Anyone who would love Bentley and BMW cars or Imax theatres or the gigs of Aerosmith or the word power of Godfather or the amazing snow flaking streets of New York will irrefutably get a kick out of the book.

A. KRISHNA SUNDER