Indian J.K. Rowling

I don’t remember whether it was 5th or 6th book in the Harry Potter series but I still can’t forget that photo I saw in the leading daily showing around 100 people standing in the queue waiting for the bookstore to open to grab a copy of the book on the releasing day. The second image was showing 12 year olds reading the book immediately in the bookstore forgetting about their parents. I have seen such children only in parks. J.K. Rowling deserves to be called as a revolutionary as she gifted a new hobby to young ones in the era of video games.

Guess what! India also has its own J.K. Rowling. But here he is a successful IIT and IIM graduate and a successful banker before becoming the Rowling of India. Perhaps people will beat me for comparing him with Rowling, but it’s true in a way or two. I remember when I was preparing for JEE and had never ever heard of the prodigy called Chetan Bhagat! I picked a copy of Five Point Someone to know about the IIT life. I was already a Dan Brown fan till then and also had read Sidney Sheldon, so I did not like the book but it had something which made me to finish it. Story was simple and it would make biology students to start preparing for JEE. For that unknown reason, I read all other Chetan Bhagat books. Three mistakes was actually better than others but one can easily skip these books as there are plenty of good books in English literature for which one life is not enough.

It’s not like I hate Chetan Bhangat but few things really frustrate me. Now we have got so many such writers in India who write dull and lousy plots. It became worse when Chetan Bhagat’s books started converting into Bollywood films. But few good writers have also come in this era like Amish Tripathi or Ravi Subramanian. At least I can praise Amish for his imagination. It was fun to read his books except the third one in Shiva trilogy, all three were proper bollywood masala types though!

An incident happened last year which made me compare Chetan Bhagat with Rowling, not for his books but for what he has done. I was there at a bloggers’ meet in Bangalore organized by Indiblogger and a person who belonged to a rural area in Karnataka who had a blog in regional language was a Chetan bhagat fan and he started writing after reading his books. Now it was something. That day I learned that you don’t have to be a Dan Brown or Ken Follet to reach to your readers and make people to start reading and adopting it as a hobby.

Today all the dailies are having articles on Chetan Bhagat’s upcoming book ‘Half-Girlfriend’ which made me to write this article. After all the criticism for his books, TOI columns, everyone accepts the fact that Chetan Bhagat has given and is still giving thousands of fresh readers to Indian literature. If they start reading foreign authors then it will be a victory of the language else our Indian authors will always have a long and glamorous life. If I get a chance to meet Chatan bhagat in future then I have only one request for him that he has got a huge readers’ base and he can actually do wonders in Indian literature. In simple words: please don’t repeat Revolution 2020 or Half-Girlfriend!

P.S. Here are the links to the articles I have mentioned from today's dailies:
Business Standard
TOI Blog
DNA
India Today
TOI

Representing India

I still remember when I went for a trek to Nainital when I was in school and we had to wait on Delhi railway station while coming back to Mumbai due to delayed train and as many of us were school going children we just sat on the platform not caring for our cloths or dirt, as such we don’t usually on railway stations. But suddenly a group of foreigners came and they started taking our photos. Perhaps they found the children sitting in a cue cute or they had not seen this before. It will be wrong to be judgmental but as a child I thought that they were taking photos so that they could show them to their folks and gossip about poor India.

I really feel bad when someone say India is poor though it is true but at least we deserve to be called as developing country. I feel shameful when there are incidents like molestation and rape with foreigners. When Indians were attacked in Australia I can surely state that every Indian must have felt to beat the accused personally, but we have to keep faith in law and order. Similarly families of those foreign nationals do, but as we all know time was and will never be a concerning factor for us while giving justice to victims.

We all jumped on our sofa when the movie ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ won Oscar and we felt proud like every one of us received the honor. But sometimes I think it is a documentary on slums in Mumbai and how inefficient we are, not to have found a proper solution on it yet. But as it is just a movie which was made for mere entertainment so that I can watch it for fun. I feel confused when Indian government claims to have ‘Atithi devo bhava’ (guest is God) campaign and they show in their ad that foreigners are getting molested by Indians and also saved by other Indians, that means you can come to India and some Indians are there to save you instead of making stricter laws to prevent such incidents. I am sure that if anyone outside India is watching that ad he or she will never want to take a chance and try their luck to travel in India.

When this delegate dilemma happened in US, it must have become an issue of gossip over tea-coffee in every other embassy and such small incidents where it is difficult to take a stand just pull down our global image. I never have traveled outside India and hence never came to know how the outside people think of my country and if anyone makes false allegations or makes fun of us then what the Indians living there generally do in such situations, whether they prove them wrong or they just ignore such things for the sake of better living they are getting in the developed countries.

So I won’t hesitate to accept that I am unaware of perspective of people globally while looking towards India and I personally feel that we have a bad impression on them until last month when I met Paul, a PhD student from Germany who came to IIM Bangalore as an exchange program student and luckily I was doing an Internship there at the same time and he was my neighbor for a month. He was really a nice person who really surprised me when I heard him bargaining with auto rickshaw guy. Generally they get the stuff for 500 bucks which we get for not more than fifty rupees. On a lighter note, we earn less so we spend less; they earn a lot in terms of value of money so it is a big opportunity for everyone to sell the stuff at a maximum price possible though it is not at all correct either legally or morally. Even he was charged more for being foreigner to enter into Bangalore palace. It makes me laugh because it is directly proportional to increasing price of the US dollar.

Foreigners find it difficult to get familiar with delayed trains and buses all the time. Still Paul managed to travel four cities in one month completing his work, which I never really understood how. But the best part is he went everywhere on his own and his experience was smooth, simple and memorable. Perhaps everywhere he found someone who guided him a right way. I got this opportunity to know my country from his point of view and it told me a lot. One always is a centre of attraction in India if he has a white skin. But he made himself feel like he was one of us. I am damn sure if anyone asks him about India then he will definitely tell that India is beautiful and Indians are trustworthy!

I wish everyone a happy and prosperous new year and want to convey a message to all Indians that we are doing well till now though we have to change some practices and let’s make it a 2014 resolution.