Chetan Bhagat, a Mumbai based banker turned author has emerged as a favourite author among young readers in India and abroad. His stories are fast paced, and he has a knack to capture the most ordinary life’s experiences into shining Technicolor images of special unforgettable moments.
His connection to the youth
All his novels connect to the young generation, as they deal with the problems and frustrations that young people identify themselves with. This includes love, romance, pressures of a competitive environment, coupled with expectations from parents to excel in the vocation chosen by the parents themselves, as well as the set ideas of how marriages should be fixed. Even in 21st century urban India, all these make up for stories that touch the reader at some level and lets one identify himself or herself with the characters of his novels, or the movies they have been made into.
Books turned into movies
Perhaps it is this style of writing that has resulted in 4 of Chetan Bhagat’s books being taken up for making into movies. The first one was 3 Idiots based on his first novel Five Point Someone: What Not to Do at IIT. This movie with star cast Aamir Khan and Kareena Kapoor was an instant hit with all its characters portraying real life people that the audience could identify with.
His second novel, One Night @ the Call Center, giving an insight into lives of people working at BPOs (Business Process Outsourcing) was made into the movie Hello. The movie starring Salman Khan did not do very well at the box office, but as per the BPO workers, is a realistic account of what life at these call centres is for the people who wake up nights to work, as all around sleep.
The next release was Kai Po Che! based on the novel The 3 Mistakes of My Life, for which Chetan Bhagat wrote the screenplay himself. Revolving around the life and ambitions of three friends in Gujarat, it is a poignant depiction of how life gets affected after the earthquake in Bhuj.
Chetan Bhagat’s fourth book 2 States: The Story of My Marriage talks about how he, a Punjabi met his Tamilian wife and what followed between the two families and ultimately the couple themselves. However, like most of Bhagat’s stories, the happily ever after fairy tale continues into this story as well. The book was recently made into the movie by the same name. Starring Arjun Kapoor and Alia Bhatt, the story is a biographical account of the author’s meeting his wife at IIM where they both studied and their romantic journey interwoven with problems, right up to their marriage. Like the success of 3 Idiots and Kai Po Che!, 2 States directed by Abhishek Verman has gone on to be a super hit movie.
In 2014, Chetan’s writing for Bollywood has continued; not through having one of his novels turned into a film, but through writing the screenplay for the movie Kick starring Salman Khan and Jacqueline Fernandez, which has turned into one of the highest earning Bollywood movies of all time.
Image credit: www.chetanbhagat.com and reproduced under Creative Commons 3.0[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://writingtipsoasis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Nidhi.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Nidhi Manuja is a creative freelance writer who started her career as human resource professional but later moved on to writing, which has given her a chance to be creative and follow the path of her father’s success as well who is an author.[/author_info] [/author]