Kaala Akshar Bhains Baraabar??

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.