Chetan
Bhagat’s HALF GIRLFRIEND puts down hopes by half and ends up with a half
star…!!
Bestsellers like Five Point Someone, 3
mistakes of My life and 2 States:
The Story of My Marriage - have inspired many directors of Bollywood to
make movies on his book and movies like 3 idiots, 2 states, kai po che.
Like all these, Chetan Bhagat’s recent launch – “HALF GIRLFRIEND” is too filmy. It
actually seems like it was written for a film adaptation like his previous
books. It
is more hype than matter.
Apart from it, I found the role of Madhav
(lead role) to be contradictory to what CB portrays him to be. Character of
Madhav at times behaves more than a Bihari village boy suffering from a low
self-confidence because of his poor English. He comes up with dialogues which
makes you wonder if he is indeed a timid village boy whom CB has introduced in
trailer. Secondly, I hate how CB's hero is desperate and are always try getting
physical with their friend (so called HALF GIRLFRIEND). This gives a wrong
impression to readers, who are mostly young, that love is just about getting
physical. CB has reduced sexual content in this book, but makes up for the lack
of it with the hero's desperate attempts to kiss the girl on several occasions.
This false definition of love can be easily taken by the youth which is not
quite acceptable. I seriously don’t understand why in all his books CB tries to
show a guy’s love as mere physical attraction and why his heroes would always
fall for the most beautiful girl in the campus and why they are desperate have
something more than friendship. I find no big difference between his concept of
half girlfriend and Friends with benefits.
Like in all his other
books, the used the same formula in this one too. Start with a dramatic
prologue and then add some Bollywood style story with absolutely no plot.
Routine story – “ Boy loves girl. Girl loves boy. Then there is a happy ending
that comes out of many problems..!”. The storyline
is routine and predictable. The writing is uninteresting and the characters are
dull.
There have been many
times I have said that there are very few Indian fictional authors who can
create the same magic with their writing as International authors and CB used
to be one of them. Unfortunately that's definitely not the case anymore. All
his standards of writing have come drastically down. I feel its better for CB
to write story lines for Indian movies where much of romance and useless
stories are encouraged.
I certainly didn't
expect this from someone who has written brilliant stuff in 'Five point
someone' or 'Three mistakes of my life'.
With 'Half Girlfriend',
CB has proved that he now only writes so that his work can scripted into
Bollywood movies and he can earn big bucks. And this one is no different.
Typical Bollywood magic that would work on screen.
#Literature #9D
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