No sparks of revolution in Chetan Bhagat's new book

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sangeeta das

Chetan Bhagat, is surely the best selling author in India, who can keep his readers hooked making his books a great page-turner. But this time his Revolution 2020 fails to ignite any spark.

IN HIS BOOKS one finds a love story revolving around youths representing anger, confussion, pressure, insult, pain, struggle with an easy-to-understand language. His latest creative venture-Revolution 2020 with tagline Love, Corruption, Ambition also tells the story of childhood friends Gopal,

Raghav and Aarti with the same fervour and style. Gopal, an average Joe, wants to be a rich man. Raghav, a topper, who belongs to a well to do family, wants to bring a change and Aarti, also from a well to do family with political background, wants to be an airhostess.

The story begins with first person narration by Gopal since the trio were children. As they grow young, Aarti becomes the love interest of both the male protagonists. Aarti's decision to choose Raghav as her soulmate and Gopal's aim to become a rich man, drives him to give into the system. On the other hand, Raghav rejects an offer from Infosys to pursue a career in journalism, and he subsequently starts his own 'fluorescent pink A3 sized' news pamphlet Revolution 2020 to fight against corruption.

However, the story takes a twist towards the end when Gopal realises "may be that Keshav hasn't died... May be that innocent, good part of us never dies - we just trample upon it for a while". Here, Gopal strives to become a good human being. With this scene, the author is able to elevate Gopal in the eyes of the readers but his inadequate portrayal of Raghav fails to elevate him despite his fight against corruption. Also, the author forgets to give detailed description of Raghav's execution of work related to exposing scams and other big scandals. This was an important thing taking into consideration that the title of the book is based on Raghav's aim to initiate a revolution.

Shifting our focuss to the story's location, we find a change. The author set his story in the holy city of Varanasi, one of the world's oldest cities. He also gives a glimpse of its culture and description on various occasions. One of these descriptions is, "A dozen priests holding giant lamps the size of flaming torches, prayed in synchronised moves as singers chanted in the background. Hundreds of tourists gathered around the proiests. No matter how many times you see it, the aarti on Varanasi ghats manages to mesmerise each time." Surely, one would be tempted to "come to Varanasi once in a lifetime".

Revolution 2020, is a nice effort by the author to draw our attention towards youth's sufferings, longings, struggles to achieve goals, success as well as prevailing corruption in our society, government's policy for private education sector, which gives birth to more illegal ways and means. Despite strong messages of the book, it fails to ignite any sparks in the readers. Its abrupt and depressed ending, scanty space given to the revolution part, unusual twist in the love story and insufficient character delienation leave readers with many unanswered questions. Probably, the writer could start a sequal to answer all the questions of the readers. To sum up, one can go for it for one sole reason-to pass the time if there's nothing else to do.