Showing posts with label chetan bhagat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chetan bhagat. Show all posts

Friday 24 December 2021

Revolution2020

 Revolution Twenty20


Introduction:

“Once upon a time, in small-town India, there lived two intelligent boys.

One wanted to use his intelligence to make money.

One wanted to use his intelligence to start a revolution.

The problem was, they both loved the same girl.”

Revolution 2020 – a story about childhood friends Gopal, Raghav and Aarti who struggle to find success, love and happiness in Varanasi. However, it is not easy to attain these in an unfair society that rewards the corrupt. As Gopal gives in to the system, and Raghav fights it, who will win?” (Blurb on the last cover-page)

Revolution 2020: Love, Corruption, Ambition is a 2011 novel by Chetan Bhagat. Its story is concerned with a love triangle, corruption and a journey of self-discovery. R2020 has addressed the issue of how private coaching institutions exploit aspiring engineering students and how parents put their lifetime's earnings on stake for these classes so that their children can crack engineering exams and change the fortune of the family. While a handful accomplish their dreams, others sink into disaster.

The author stated that the novel is based on the "rampant corruption" apparent in the Indian educational system (Firstpost)

Characters in the Novel:

1. Gopal Mishra - One who wanted to use his intelligence to make money - who ultimately joins hands with corrupt politician to walk on the path of corruption and starts private engineering college, Ganga Tech College in Varanasi.
2. Raghav - One who wanted to use his intelligence to start a revolution - who ultimately runs his own news paper 'Revolution 2020' to bring in change in society and make nation free from corruption. He has cracked JEE and AIEEE and joins BHU-IT instead of famous IITs or NITs so he can pursue journalism along with engineering. He follows his passion to be a journalist who can bring in 'change' in society rather than opt for an easy job in multination company or public sector company like his father who was IITian and works as engineer in BHEL.
3. Aarti - daughter of IAS office who is District Magistrate of Varanasi and love interest of both, Gopal and Raghav.


Thematic Study:

The novel 'R2020' deals with the theme of Love, Corruption, Ambition and Revolution.

Click here to read in detail about these themes.

Narrative Technique:

Chetan Bhagat narrative technique has a sort of method which he follows in most of his novels. His signature style is to stat with Prologue and end with Epilogue. He himself appears in these prologues-epilogues and listens story from one of the characters of the novel - and then allows him to tell the story in fist-person narration.
Can we apply

GĂ©rard Genette

's narratology to this novel? 

Popular Literature

UndoubtedlyRevolution Twenty20 belongs to the genre of 'Genre Fiction'. It is part of popular literature. It represents popular contemporary culture of India.



Additional Resources

1. An online talk by Prof. Om P. Juneja on 'Chetan Bhagat'





Tuesday 9 December 2014

Chetan Bhagat's 'one night @ the call center': Worksheet for Literary Analysis

Worksheet for Literary Analysis
Chetan Bhagat's 'one night @ the call centre' (2005)
(Quiz based on this novel)


(Do not miss to visit this blog for some interesting videos and links
http://dilipbarad.blogspot.in/2014/01/chetan-bhagat-writer-prof-om-juneja.html)
Bhagat's Novels retain 5 position in top ten beset sellers in India
“It isn’t great literature. Serious critics will no doubt quibble with the two-dimensional characterization, the pedestrian prose, the plot’s contrived dues ex machine, and the author’s hokey spiritualism.” (Tharoor). Yet, Chetan Bhagat’s novels remain top 5 best sellers in January 2014. ‘one night @ the call centre’ (on@tcc, the author likes to call it thus), after nine long years of its publication, still retains sixth position among top ten bestselling novels in India in January 2014. (Balaji). Even then, there are websites which does not consider Chetan Bhagat in revered and highly acclaimed English fiction and novel writers who have garnered prestigious literary awards such as the Pulitzer and the Booker Prize. (Kausambi). This website considered Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things - 1997), Amitav Ghosh (The Shadow Lines – 1988), Anita Desai (Fasting, Feasting - 1999), Vikram Sheth (A Suitable Boy – 1993), Khushwant Singh (Train to Pakistan – 1956), Abraham Verghese (Cutting For Stone – 2009), Amit Chaudhary (The Immortals – 2009), Akhil Sharma (An Obedient Father – 2000) and Aravind Adiga (The White Tiger – 2008) (Kausambi) as the Top Selling Must Read Indian Novelist of high acclaim. Quite conspicuously, Chetan Bhagat is not mention in this list. It may not have any effect on Chetan Bhagat. “For all its billion-strong population, only 61% of whom can officially read, India is hardly commercially viable territory for the workaday novelist. The typical Indian “bestseller” sells between 3,000 and 5,000 copies; a true success is one that remains in print for years, with reprints of 2,000 copies or so every nine or twelve months. In this modest market, on@tcc reportedly sold more than 1,00,000 copies in the first few months after its publication, and the demand shows no sign of abating.” (Tharoor). Quite obvious, why would anybody care for awards when the showers of manna overflow the coffers?

To be or not to be popular is not under the control of the text. So, to say that, the text does not have literariness because it is popular is nothing less than an injustice forced on the text.  No fiction shall be denied the literary analysis. We may conclude against the text, but not without weighing pros and cons of and in the literary text.

Well, let us see if this brave attempt by the Boswell of this brave new middle-class Indians (the Samuel Johnsons) has captured their aspirations, the dream and the desire better themselves in the era of Globalization with poignancy or has just touch-and-go kind of superficial portrayal of their characters and life. Let us pose some questions before on@tcc and see if it has potential to answer them.  The students are suggested to give their responses to the below given markers in the ‘comment’ below this blogpost.

1.     Contemporary issues in on@tcc:
a.     Do you agree: “Bhagat has a talent for tapping into the zeitgeist; that he is not much older than the people he writes about makes him a particularly credible portrayer of their world.” (Tharoor). Give illustrations from your reading of the novel.
b.     Can you justify this observation? “Bhagat's tone is pitch-perfect, his observer's eye keenly focused on nuance and detail. Verisimilitude is all: The first two thirds of the novel evokes, indeed reproduces, the way the young call center workers think, talk, eat, drink, dress, date and behave.” (Tharoor).
c.      Had  Bhagat’s vision been shallow, he wouldn’t have been able to see “call-centers as soul-destroying sweatshop, soaking up the energies of young Indians who could be doing better for themselves and their country”. (Bhagat). Do you feel that Chetan Bhagat with this observation has captured the skeleton image of the undercurrents in the society?
d.     Bhagat has an insight for the contemporary issues that are movers and shakers in India. See the below give table. You will find all his novels listed with the key contemporary issue portrayed with his imaginative stockade in the fiction, respectively. Share your observations on the important issues of the time and its delineation in Chetan Bhagat’s fictional oeuvre.

Issues in Bhagat's novels
e. Coleridge remarked in defence of Wordsworth: Had Mr. Wordsworth's poems been the silly, the childish things … they must have sunk at once, a dead weight, into the slough of oblivion, and have dragged the preface along with them.” (Coleridge). In light of the decade long career of Chetan Bhagat, can we say so about his literary contribution? 

2.     Mannepean satire:

a.     Menippean satire, seriocomic genre, chiefly in ancient Greek literature and Latin literature, in which contemporary institutions, conventions, and ideas were criticized in a mocking satiric style that mingled prose and verse. (Manippean Satire). Can you justify on@tcc as Menippean satire?
Do not miss to illustrate contemporary conventions like ‘throwaway culture’ (Suraiya) or ‘the great Indian chamcha’ (watch this video:

)


                                                             i.      Other issues that surfaced while discussion in the classroom – Bossism (authority), satire on people’s mindset that God only can solve problem, satire on work-culture (i.e. love your work but never your company, you never know when your company stops loving you), ‘loyalty’, marriage institution, family values (Priyanka: “I want my mother to be happy. But I cannot kill myself for it. My mother needs to realize . . . she is responsible for her own happiness.” Radhika: “I want to divorce Anuj. I don’t want to ever look at my mother-in-law’s face again.” (Bhagat)).

3.     The effect of Globalization:

a.     Thomas Friedman’s the World is Flat (Friedman)and on@tcc:
                                                             i.      Friedman’s notion of the Flat World is a reality. Justify this with an analysis fo the novel on@tcc. (Read here the reference in Chapter 2)
                                                           ii.      What sort of future projections discussed in The World is Flat seems to be supported in the fictional narrative of on@tcc?
                                                        iii.      on@tcc is a novel which brings out th effects of Globalisation at the cost of the personal. Elaborate.
                                                        iv.      Globalization has had a huge impact on thinking across the humanities, redefining the understanding of fields such as communication, culture, politics, and literature. (Connell and Marsh). How far is this novel affected by Globalization?
v. "Although technological revolution, transnational corporations, and global restructuring of capitalism have made the world increasingly interdependent and interconnected, radically altering our concepts of time, space, politics, and relations, this has in no way changed the fundamental fact that the West still poses or imposes itself as the centre of the world. The mythology of a world already decentered politically, culturally, economically, and ideologically papers over the lived global power-relations between the developed West and the underdeveloped Rest." (Shaoba Xie, Is the World Decentered? A Postcolonial Perspective on Globalization.) 
vi. Suman Gupta in Under Construction: “World Literature” in the Twenty-First Century portrays many of globalization’s major topics and processes: intercultural relations, intercultural conflict, transnationalism, population mobility, heterogenization, homogenization, hybridity, the public-private interface, economic integration, and so on.
vii. Sanjaya Subramanium's observation on another post-modern paradox authorship. (Read full interview) Here in on@tcc, how does this operate?

4.     Narrative Structure:
a.     The literature is not just telling stories in chronological order. It is the ‘how’ part of the story-telling which matters most. Chetan Bhagat makes interesting use of prologue and epilogue in this novel. The Aristotelian unities of time, place and action are also taken care of in plot construction. The justification of dues ex machine is also given with the possible alternative reading of the novel without God. Discuss with reference to the narrative structure of Life of Pi (Martel), the merits and demerits of the narrative structure of on@tcc.

b. “The narrative follows the dream of the author in train from Kanpur to Delhi, wherein God, in form of mysteriously beautiful young lady, narrates the story of ‘One Night @ the Call Centre’, which, in turn, is written from the perspective of Shyam – one of the six characters in the novel.” Comment upon the narrative structure of the novel.


5.     Popular Literature and ON@TCC

a.     Do you agree that on@tcc has following characteristics (Robinson, "Popular Prose Fiction.")  of Popular literature? Do not miss to give illustrations:
                                                             i.      Popular literature commonly lacks a sustained plot, worked out with close regard to cause and effect.
                                                           ii.      Still more characteristically it lacks the study of character and the intellectual analysis of such varied problems as occupy the fiction of the present age.
                                                        iii.      The popular romances lay their stress chiefly on incident and adventure or simple intrigue, and set forth only the more familiar and accepted moral teachings.
                                                        iv.      They represent, on the whole, an instinctive or traditional, rather than a highly reflective, philosophy of life.
                                                           v.      For all these reasons they have come to be regarded chiefly as the literature of children; a natural result, perhaps, of the fact that they originated largely in the childhood of civilization or among the simple peoples in more advanced ages.
                                                        vi.      It does not raise or answer abstract questions; it assumes that man knows what he needs to know in order to live.

6.     Self-help book and on@tcc:

a.     Define and discuss the characteristics of Self – help book in on@tcc.
What is the importance of the Call from God in the novel? Do you believe that under the law of probability and possibility, there are once in a while chances of such happenstance?
b. Reading resources: 
i) Self-Help, Inc. by Micki McGee / Review of this book - Click here to read online
ii) Self-Help Book (wikipedia)



7. One of the themes of the novel is its anti-American sentiments which are intertwined with Nationalism. Had you been God, what would have been your answer to Vroom when he said "If only you had given India as much as America!"?



Quiz:

Click here to appear in the quiz to test your understanding of the novel



The Hindi film Hello is based on this novel. (Bhagat, Hello)




Additional Reading Resources:







Bibliography

Balaji. neetchi. 2 Jan 2014. 8 Dec 2014 <http://www.neetchi.com/best-selling-books-in-india-january-2014/>.
Bhagat, Chetan. one night @ the call center. New Delhi: Rupa & Co., 2005.
Coleridge, Samuel. Biographia Literaria or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions. London, 1815-17.
Connell, Liam and Nicky Marsh. Literature and Globalization: A Reader. USA: Routledge Literature Readers, 2011.
Friedman, Thomas. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. United Sates: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.
Hello. Dir. Atul Agnihotri. Perf. Chetan Bhagat. Prod. Atul Agnihotri. 2008.
India, The Times of. "The Great Indian Chamcha." 23 Nov 2014. YouTubeIndiaTimes. 8 Dec 2014 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHfR04Jm54g>.
Kausambi. track.in. 9 Aug 2014. 8 Dec 2014 <http://trak.in/tags/business/2012/02/09/top-selling-indian-novels-all-times/>.
Life of Pi. Dir. Ang Lee. Perf. Yan martel. 2012.
"Manippean Satire." 27 March 2013. Encyclopaedia Britannica. 8 Dec 2014 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/375088/Menippean-satire>.
Martel, Yan. Life of Pi. Canada: Knopf Canada, 2001.
Robinson, F.N. "Popular Prose Fiction." The Harvard Classics 1909-14. 8 Dec 2014 <http://www.bartleby.com/60/162.html>.
Suraiya, Jug. "Throwaway culture: Unlike earlier days when things were made to last, today everything is disposable." 3 Dec 2014. timesofindia.indiatimes.com. 8 Dec 2014 <http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/jugglebandhi/throwaway-culture/>.
Tharoor, Shashi. "India Finds Its Calling." Mar.-Apr. 2006. Foreign Policy. Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLCStable. 6 Dec. 2013 <http://www.jstor.org/stable/25462017>.
Xie, Shaoba. 'Is the World Decentered? A Postcolonial Perspective on Globalization.' In Joseph and Wilson 2006, pp.53-75



Sunday 5 January 2014

Chetan Bhagat: The Writer - Prof. Om Juneja

Prof. Om P. Juneja, Prof. Emeritus, HMP Institute of English Teaching and Research (Vallabh Vidya Nagar), Former, Prof. Dept. of English, M.S. Universtiy of Baroda - having talk with studetns of Department of English, M.K. Bhavnagar University, Bhavnagar. The topic of discusion is 'Chetan Bhagat - the Writer'. The speaker discussed:
* what is right / wrong with Chetan Bhagat
* Politics of Awards
* Young India and
* why study Chetan Bhagat?

The students of the Department of English are studying Chetan Bhagat's 'One Night @ The Call Centre'. They (especially Ajay Jajeda, Avani Dave, Deepti Joshi, Hirva Vora, Riddhi Jani and Nidhi Kunvarani) actiely participated in the talk via Google Hangout on Air.

You can view the auto-recorded video (which is interesting feature of Google Hangout on Air. Keep in mind, it is not simple video call over Hangout. It is Google Hangout on Air!)with a few edits on YouTube. The video is embedded hereunder:




Chetan Bhagat is quite a controversial write in the gallaries of canonical literary studies. Thus, he arouses quite contradictory reactions. There are people who are die-hard fan - and there are who do not miss a chance to attack him. View this wonderful video where the author meets the hater:




There were interesting debates on news channels regarding Chetan Bhagat's new book 'Half Girlfriend'.
Here are videos of those talk-shows:







(Nepathya - Aside)
Isn't the success story of Chetan Bhagat the success story of capitalism? The Capitalism functions on one mantra: 'Under the garb of Freedom, encash everything!" Turn everything into commodity, market it, create buyers and earn money. Be it faith or literature, market it like beverages and skin whiteners; and see the tamaashaa! Those who are not surprised to see the rising demand of Ganesh Pandals, are not surprised to see rising demands of Chetan Bhagat; as they very understand the market phenomenon in capitalist societies. However, the question is: "Are those who are surprised at Chetan Bhagat phenomenon, surprised or shocked at rising marketing and commodification of rituals/faith? (last two videos and this note updated on 29 Aug 2014)

There was an interesting discussion on 'What makes for a canonical writer?' on ELTAI Literature SIG. Let me share some of the observations which were discussed on this thread: (To give due respect to the originality of all the contributors, their views are copy-pasted retaining font size, type and colour as they designed them :) )
Some people say that Chetan Bhagat is not an "established writer". Some others say that he is not a literary author.
  • So making a research or study on his works is useless and wont bring any good response or help increase API. 

    Now may I request you learned masters to please help me appease my curiosity and tell me how to differentiate between 'an established writer' and a 'non established writer' OR how to know whether a particular author is a literary author or not.

    For ex. Adiga wrote a single novel and he is accepted as an established writer and a literary author but Bhagat, despite writing almost half a dozen books is still lacking this status.

    Please help me. I'm much puzzled. ~ J.K. Mishra

  • A difficult problem really. There are no set formulae to evaluate a writer to admit him in the literary fold. 
    A work should be faithful and true to the world it creates. It should present human problems and situations and not lead us into fanciful worlds of unreality. Apart from them there are formal features of a work which also help us to judge it.
    Try to read relevant chapters in Rene Wellek and Austin Warren's Theory of Literature. You may find them useful. ~ Nagarajan
  • I do not know if I will be able to satisfy you with my query but let me try to answer. No work is really literary or non literary. It is we who place it in categories. I personally think that if a book is able to touch us deep inside and make us feel then the book is good as it emotes with us. As students and teachers of literature it is our duty to remove hierarchies and accept differences. Unfortunately, we are caught in this mire of canonisation. Today in many universities there are popular fiction courses and you may know about the anthology on pulp fiction. I do prefer Adiga to Bhagat because I felt that Adiga brought out the problem of the poor beautifully while I feel with Bhagat the purpose of the story is more to gain an audience. These are my own views. ~ kalpana Rao

  • It's all politics of literature teaching within the academia.  It's the reader and his/her assessment that matters. A few Mphil students of mine have done research on Bhagat.  One is doing PhD.  I have recommended him for PG course in a few autonomous colleges.  Mostly, those who denounce him have not read him!
    Common people have rejected Adiga though he is accepted by academics and award-giving institutions like Booker because of a new moral standard the White Tiger seems to suggest.
    The idea of canonical text can be traced back to ten qualities of a great work in Aristotle's Poetics.
    If we judge by Aristotle' standard, most Dalit lit cannot be labelled lit at all. ~ John Sekar
  • I personally feel that no author, no art form, no form of any representation is either inferior or superior. Nothing is beyond the reach or relevance of academic interest.  These are days when we have serious research projects on cartoons, advertisements and even graffiti!  The crucial thing is probably the approach we take in analyzing or studying them, and the tools we use. ~ Lal C.A.

  • Chetan Bhagat is a master story teller and one the best-selling authors during the recent times.  All his books provide enjoyable reading.whether we consider them as literary works or not. It is  also a different question  altogether  if they would stand the test of time or not.  

    In my view one may take them up for research for the M.Phil.degree.At this level students are after all expected mainly  to get a thorough knowledge of methodology of doing literary research. But in the case of Ph.D. degree we expect  our scholars   attain a certain amount of scholarship at least in the field chosen. Can we expect it on the part of one who has just worked on Chetan Baghat?  ~ 
    S. Rajagopalan. 

  • Your point is worth arguing indeed. It all depends on how to classify the author in terms of literary canon. But if the canon is itself elitist how to identify the author for your project is a disturbing question. But one thing is sure, if the thesis statement accommodates the seriousness that is required, no one can reject it outright. In Malayalam literature also this kind of discussions happen especially (humorously) of course between two Varkeys. One is Muttath Varkey who is a popular writer of the late 50s and 60s and Ponkunnam Varkey who is a devoted Modernist with a strong moorings in native culture. The former was not generally taken seriously by the academia for "want of high seriousness" but the latter is adored by many researchers. Go ahead!   ~ 
    Dr.Muralikrishnan T.R.

  • I do not think that serious research on Chetan Bhagat is not possible and no univeristy can deny or invalidate degree, if a really serious work is done on any popular culture or literature. In fact, now it is time to give serious readings to contemporaneity in art, literature and culture.
    Popular fictions represent contemporary taste. If we deny its study, we will fail to understand it in future. They are cultural artefacts which requires serious attention. They have an appeal to the readers/viewers/audiences, which cannot be asked to abstain from. One should make genuine attempt to understand it. We should not forget that it was Aristotle's study of popular Greek dramatist and it was Dryden's study of popular English dramatist, that they are with us. We have glaring examples of writers like Wordsworth, who was considered as childish and his poem, nursery rhyms by elite critics - today the critics are dead, and Wordsworth is remembered as epoch-maker in hitory of Literature. Samule Beckett's 'absurdity' has an appeal to the people - and after bashing from elite critics, people started giving serious consideration - and Martin Esslin termed 'theatre of absurd'.

    So, the question of whether to study CB or Amish, or JKRowing or James Hadley Chase, Mills and Boons or for that matter any popular writer is irrelevant.

    But the important point is to give serious reading with scientific inquiry, objectiveness, systematic analysis, relevant hypothetical question, and with deep insight into the nature of research. The research tools/questions/methodology is important > in fact, it is 'the' important thing > rather than the object /text under evaluation. We can keep tools devised by Aristotle, Dryden, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Matthew Arnold, New Critics, Reader Response theorists, feminists, psychological critics, Northrop Frye, Marxists (this can be of great help in CB's case), post-structuralists (Derrida, Paul DeMan et all), post-colonial (Homi Bhabha, Spivak et all), new historicist (stephen Greenblatt) and New Cultural critics (from raymond williams, heidbige, hoggarth to Slovaj Zizek). . . . and if possible, device 'new canon' to read these new breeds of writers.

    The follwoing articles and books can be useful in the study: 
    Peter Swirski, "Popular and Highbrow Literature: A Comparative View" 
    Matthew Schneider-Mayerson "Popular Fiction Studies: The Advantages of a New Field" 
    Popular Fiction: Why We Read It, Why We Write It by Ann Maxwell/Elizabeth Lowell http://www.elizabethlowell.com/popfiction.html
    The Cambridge Companion to Popular Fiction EDITORS: David Glover, University of Southampton, Scott McCracken, Keele University. ~ 
    Dilip Barad

  • The ongoing debate on Chetan Bhagat needs some clarity. We can't question whether he is a literary figure or not. Keeping in view his books and their contents, we can easily observe the elements of literature .i.e. fictive background, ironical temper, imaginative impulse, comical vein, reformatory zeal, etc. that largely constitute the corpus of any literary piece. From all these angles, he stands as a literary figure.
    What we can question is- Is his language literary? that is also an important part of any powerful literature.From this angle, he doesn't have a literary pen at his command. A literary language is identified with a brilliant use of figure of speech, its narrative details, unconventional syntax intending to widen the horizon of literary expressions, unusual range of vocabulary, etc. Actually, it is the language of literature that induces irresistible reading of any literary writing. The force of language interwoven with thematic strings constitute a powerful literary creation. But Bhagat miserably fails in stuffing his works with this remarkable feature. We can juxtapose his writings with Arundhati / Kiran, etc. to understand this point more clearly. This linguistic weakness of Bhagat will always make the sensitive readers of literature doubt his literary potential to be reckoned in terms of universal and eternal values a literary piece truly inculcates.~ 
    Dr. Raj Kr Sharma

  • He is making so many young readers sensible towards zeitgeist. Beneath his seeming simplicity, hokey spiritualism n bollywoodish philosophy, there is 'something unnarratable - which compels people to read him. ~ Dilip Barad


  • To many, the call center has become the symbol of India's rapidly globalizing economy. While traditional India sleeps, a dynamic population of highly skilled,articulate professionals works through the night, functioning on U.S. time under made-up American aliases. They feign familiarity with a culture and climate

    they've never experienced, earn salaries that their elders couldn't have imagined (but still a fraction of what an American would make), and enjoy a lifestyle that's a cocktail of premature affluence and ersatz Westernization. It's a subculture that merits closer exam ination, and in Chetan Bhagat's One Night @ the Call Center, a breezy bestseller that has taken middle-class India by storm, the Samuel Johnsons of this brave new world have found their Boswell. ~ Shashi Tharoor.
  • Serious critics will no doubt quibble with the two-dimensional characterization, the pedestrian prose, the plot's contrved deus ex machina, and the author's hokey spiritualism. But non of that matters. ~ Shashi Tharoor.
  • Bhagat's tone is pitch-perfect, his observer's eye keenly focused on nuance and detail. Verisimilitude is all. ~ Shashi Tharoor.
  • multiplying, and the demand for skilled "agents" has driven salaries up to ever more attractive levels. Although many may suffer the angst this novel so effectively conveys, most see a job in a call center as a passport to a better life, one offering more possibilities and choices than were imaginable to the previous generation. These young Indians may keep unsocial hours, neglect their family obligations, drink excessive cocktails with names like "Long Island Iced Tea," and date each other with
    a casualness that horrifies their par ents. But they are part of a social and economic revolution that is enriching and transforming India, mostly for the better. Chetan Bhagat may not entrely approve, but it's this new India that's buying his book.
  • Do not miss to visit www.chetanbhagat.com > and his blog on this site to read responses from the readers and author's answers.
  • One reason why I find Chetan Bhagat interesting is because he is so different from academically hyped `Indian Writing in English canon comprising mostly of the diasporic writers like Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri or Kiran Desai. The guy writes about people and world with which the ` Eng. Lit' academics are not really familiar. Bhagat's novels are about India that is more recognizable than the one you find in The Moor's Last Sigh or The Midnight's Children. The Eng Lit. scholars are more conversant with Jhumpa Lahiri's expatriate NRIs living in New York than with people who work in the call-centre just round the corner. ~ Prof. Sachin Ketkar, M.S. Uni., Baroda. Read more . . . http://sachinketkar.blogspot.in/2009/12/on-disliking-chetan-bhagat.html

All the students of Semester 4 (New Literature Course) are suggested to post thier views on how enriching it was to listen Prof. Juneja - on Google Plus Community of our Department or as comment under this blog.

Do not miss to review following writeups on Chetan Bhagat: