A film script, perhaps

It was by sheer accident that I ended up reading ‘The 3 mistakes of my life’. Someone had given my brother this book and he hadn’t gotten around to reading it. So, last summer while in India, I found it lying around and so I decided to give it a look see. Now, I had never actually heard of Chetan Bhagat before this so I wasn’t even sure what to expect. And so I began thumbing the pages of this piece.

The premise was simple and the language was plain. There was nothing, how do I put this, ‘novel like’, in this book as such. It was like a really lengthy blog piece that almost anyone could have written had there been a structure and a plot given. It had all the delicious elements – friendship, cricket, love, romance, sex, betrayal, politics, religion, violence…oh you name it. Add a rain drenched heroine and a lost mother looking for the other twin son of hers and boom! You have yourself a Manmohan Desai style movie! I wasn’t too thrilled with the extremely casual vocabulary either. Now I say this cautiously but with two vital reasons – one, because I have actually been closely acquainted with down to earth English with Sir RK Narayan’s books. No one can come close to document a small town’s simple life with the tongue in cheek humor like he used to. Or for that matter Mr. Ruskin Bond’s delightfully poignant, sometimes amusing, tales from hilly Darjeeling or Dun. So yes, I do know good writing when I see one. Somehow, this piece came off as a work that was, well, written for a Bollywood potboiler. Maybe it was then that I started reading more about this Bhagat person, and I realized that most of his other works (‘Call Center’ and ‘Five point someone’) were aimed at being just that – script like in their approach. 

So we have the writer himself – Bhagat – gets a message from one Govind, a young man from Gujarat who is about to commit suicide. This sends a shiver down the writer’s spine as he desperately tries to get hold of this boy. He eventually does and makes him spill out the truth about why someone so young like him would want to attempt such a heinous crime. What follows is Govind’s narration of what happened to him that led him to take this step.

The tale essentially revolves around three friends (a trend that became popular after ‘Dil Chahta Hai’ become a blockbuster) – Govind, Omi and Ishant. Govind is a fatherless chap who wants to start a business and in quintessential Gujarati fashion is plotting of ways to make some extra moolah. Ish, short for Ishant, is a cricket fanatic who forgets to even wear clothes whenever a match is being telecast. Omi, the more subdued of the three, is a pro-Hindu lad who has an immensely political uncle called Bittoo Mama. So, with the help of some interesting business moves, the trio actually manages to open a cricket goods shop next to the temple that is managed by this portly Bittoo Mama. As time flows by, a little boy named Ali, comes into this assorted array of personalities. Apparently Ali is a master batsman who suffers from a disorder that makes him extremely attentive to a cricket ball. So much so that he just has to whack a sixer off of each one regardless of how it is bowled. Alright, so let us assume this is a realistic premise. Now seeing this, Ish takes the boy under his wings and starts to train him up. In fact they even manage to sneak into an India-Australia match and befriend an Australian cricketer! Hang on, there is more. And this Australian actually sponsors the tickets and visa for these boys – remember, out of no major affection except to see the young Ali perform – and takes them to Sydney. Wait, there is still a little bit left. And there, despite intense coaxing from the officials to get Ali to become a legal resident, the boy refuses saying he will only play for India and no other country. Did I forget to add the word ‘jingoism’ to the list above? Add to this the fact that Govind has secretly fallen for Ish’s sister Vidya and even, ahem, ended up having sex with her right on her house’s roof top and you have a yummy cuisine ready to be consumed.

It is in bizarre sequences like this that the story just fell apart for me. I am as much a fan of contemporary Indian writing as the next guy. But this was just too hypothetical to even fathom. What turns out eventually happens to be a mishmash of male bonding juxtaposed against the backdrop of religious backbiting that ends up threatening little Ali’s life. Of course, the religious leader Bittoo Mama comes out to play a very important role in the climax. 

I appreciate Bhagat’s attempt at trying to showcase the confusion with which today’s youth in India are shivering in their placid moments of instant gratification. But somehow a lot of it started becoming predictable for me once the clichés of ‘Bollywood’ style masala in terms of action and violence began taking place. Had the focus been more on the sensitivities of human drama rather than the loud and garish portrayal of Indian society, I might have enjoyed it better. But then, there are always other opportunities aren’t there? Both for the reader, and definitely for the writer.

..ShaKri..

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