Robert McCrum in The Observer:
Chetan Bhagat
A year after the launch of Slumdog Millionaire, the Oscar-winning movie of Vikas Swarup’s novel Q & A, some more quiz questions: Who is the most read living Indian writer? Is it a) Aravind Adiga (Booker prize-winning author of The White Tiger); b) Salman Rushdie (Midnight’s Children); c) Vikram Seth (A Suitable Boy); or d) Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things)?
The answer: none of these. Two generations after independence, one of the vital characteristics of the new India is that the educated middle class who once turned to English for business applications now see it in a different light. To them, in a manner typical of English language and culture in many parts of formerly colonial society, it is becoming decoupled from its bitter imperial past.
This new middle-class audience – small entrepreneurs, managers, travel agents, salespeople, secretaries, clerks – has an appetite for literary entertainment that falls between the elite idiom of the cultivated literati, who might be familiar with the novels of Amitav Ghosh or Salman Rushdie, and the Indian English of the street and the supermarket. Theirs is the Indian English of the outsourcing generation. For these people, there is only one author: Chetan Bhagat. Who? More:
From the Times of India:
`3 Idiots’ may be creating box-office history. But all’s certainly not well between Chetan Bhagat, the author of the book from which the movie has been adapted, and its hero Aamir Khan, producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra and director Rajkumar Hirani.
An `idiotic’ controversy has broken out over accusations of credit poaching. The film credits the story to Abhijat Joshi and Hirani. Bhagat’s name appears at the film’s end.
Bhagat is miffed that the film does not give him due credit. Khan claims that Bhagat is trying to take away the credit from the film’s scriptwriter, Joshi. More:
From Mint:
Produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra and directed by Hirani, 3 Idiots created box office history by fetching Rs175 crore just days after it was released in 1,750 theatres across the world on Christmas day, which makes it the biggest opening for a Hindi film this past decade.
While Bhagat believes that around 70% of the film is based on his book, the makers of the film have previously said that only 2-5% of it is based on the book and that it was like an original script after the changes. On Thursday, Bhagat said in a blog on his website www.chetanbhagat.com that the film-makers had been unfair.
He alleged in his blog that, contrary to what the makers have said, much of 3 Idiots is from his original. More:
Chetan Bhagat, author of the bestseller, One Night @ the Call Centre, in the Times of India:
The BJP is screaming that Mr Jinnah was not indeed as secular as claimed by Jaswant Singh. Experts on TV are citing events in 1932 which prove that Jinnah was a good person; countered by an equal number of experts citing historical events which prove that Jinnah did terrible things.
To answer the Jinnah question from the point of view of the young generation – Who cares?
Really, whether Mr Jinnah did wonderful things or he did horrible things and whatever point of view your party likes to take – who gives a damn? How is this relevant to the India we have to build today? Are we electing leaders for the future or selecting a history teacher?
The strange thing is the media buys into this pointless debate – about Mr Jinnah being good or bad and spends hours discussing it. By doing so, it gives legitimacy to the whole exercise.
Meanwhile, the young generation fails to understand why do our politicians become so passionate defending these relics of the past? Why don’t they have a fanatical debate about how fast we will make roads, colleges, bridges and power plants? Why don’t people get expelled over current non-performance rather than historical opinions? Why don’t we ban useless government paperwork rather than banning books about dead people? More:
