I was 8 when I was formally introduced to books by my
father. Till then, my reading usually consisted of Diamond Comics, Champak etc.
I admit, A few months back, I found a very old, very forgotten stack of Champak
in my store room and I quite romanticized the idea of reading the old childhood
stories…until I opened it. Then it dawned on my that while these stories,
simplistically written, were geared for the precisely nubile minds of toddlers
and pre-teens. So naturally, the plot lines were extremely simple, the
narrative was straight forward, and the language was homey and friendly. Kind
of reads like our beloved aunty is telling us something of interest.
Come to the risk-fraught age of Teens. I was in my 9th
standard (fourteen years old) when I laid hands on One Night at the
Call Center. Finished it in one night. Chetan Bhagat’s story about these
characters who “work”, “get stressed”, “need a drink to wind down” etc made me
feel like I have finally graduated to the level where I can read and understand
what the elder people do, the bhaiyas and the didis go through.
Since then, till the age of nineteen, I read all his
successive and preceding work, coupled with Mr.Durjoy Dutta joining in the
gallery of the authors I have read. I must say, after ONATCC, Chetan lost his
edge. Infact, comparing Five Point Someone and One night…, I noticed that
Mr.Bhagat has more and more relied on the scale of how pathetic his characters
actually are in order to make it seem like even trivial acts of kindness or
benefits are a huge deal for these characters.
On the other hand, Mr.Durjoy Dutta (with his absolutely
rubbish and lamely humorous titles such as “Of course I love you..till I
find someone Better”) seem to be unabashedly proud and gloating in the loser
status of his principal characters. Here we have an author whose
character’s are idiotically self-ridiculing, almost completely ignorant of a
concept called self-respect, socially precocious to the limit of being
comparable to the Victorian-age ladies who believed that showing stockings
were scandalous but fornicating with servants in their bedrooms was
common social trend among the effluent. In Mr.Dutta’s best selling
trilogy, and successive novels, he has been lauded as a “Youth writer”, “cute”,
“one who understands how love is”. Oh absolutely, Love is a lot of things I
suppose. (I wouldn’t actually know. Its pretty exhaustive to contemplate about
love, don’t you think?)
But what is the sense of glorifying a writer whose
characters are no better than junkies, brats, sluts or idiots who simply cannot
keep their dicks in their pants?? Where is the sense in idolizing such a social
generation where relationships are merely subtler game of manipulations and
hybridization of expectations in order to find the suitable combination without
much of the fuss.?
I for one, have been completely pissed off with the kind of
adoration Mr.Bhagat andMr.Dutta now seem to enjoy. And Thank god
for Mr.Tarun Tejpal and his deliciously subtle yet so much more intensely
sensible works. God knows what would I do without him.
Meanwhile, I do seem to be getting the notion that as long
as it is spicy or scandalous or something mildly taboo, we are okay with
reading it. Just don’t ask us to read something that creates a question or
poses a serious query. Kaala akshar bhains baraabar, after all!
P.S. As for you Mr.Shashi Tharoor and your Great Indian
Novel, well, lets just say I cannot talk about it without being absolutely
gutter-ish so we’ll avoid that.
