"...a simple and beautiful love story that will touch your
heart and inspire you to chase your dreams." - Goodreads
 |
| Source: www.wikipedia.org |
Before
starting the actual review, I just want to clarify that I am not one of those
'I hate Chetan's stories' guys. I really enjoyed reading Five Point Someone and
2 States. There has long been a criticism that Bhagat unnecessarily includes
social problems that are not related to the core of the novel. I do not agree
with any such statements because it is his style of writing. None of us
question Dan Brown for going into the intricacies of Roman Architecture, or
criticise Khaled Hosseini for elaborately describing the beauty and nature of
Afghanistan. Ultimately they intend to make the readers aware of these details,
so does Chetan Bhagat. However, lately he seems to have forgotten the most
essential part of a novel - the story. Story is the most attractive element of
a novel that drives the reader to immerse and grasp the intended message. When
the story is repetitive, monotonous or predictive, the novel fails, as happened
in the case of Half Girlfriend.
A Bihari
boy, Madhav Jha, gets admitted into the prestigious St. Stephen's College and
befriends a rich Delhi girl, Riya Somani. He falls in love with her, she agrees
only to be his "half-girlfriend", his lust betrays him, resulting in
"half-break up". She discontinues studies, marries a rich family
friend and moves to London. With a broken heart, he follows his dream
and starts running a school in his hometown. She gets a divorce, flies back to
India, meets him, helps him, but disappears. He finds her journals, searches
for her, finally finds her in New York. They live Happily Together.
On the
positive note, the story deals with the characters we see in real lives. Chetan Bhagat writes in a simple and understandable language, that can easily reach Indian masses. Within the story line he has beautifully highlighted some of the
social problems like the class disparity of Indian society, regional
differences, false pride of high society, child abuse, corruption in politics, etc.
Half
Girlfriend is more of a movie script than a novel, to the worse, it is an half
cooked one with loads of logical flaws. There was no real necessity for Chetan's
presence in the story. Why would the lead character bring his dead
girlfriend's journals to a writer, whose novels were read by him for the sole
purpose of learning English? Wouldn't he want to know what his girlfriend wrote
before dying? A guy, who tried to decode her every expression during each moment
together, who had clinged on to the past for two years by thinking about her everyday, yet is not curious about what she has written in her
journal. It doesn’t seem realistic. Riya cuts off from the world
with utmost perfection, but forgets about her journal! These logical flaws clearly shows the lack
of caution and realism from the author's side.
The
intent to weave social issues inside the story is appreciable, but real content is missing. Neither the causes for class disparity, overemphasis on English,
false pride etc., are explored, nor their effects are discussed. Author
could've done some research and given attention to the deepest intricacies of
the problems. Without doing so, the intended effect - reaching the readers, is
not possible. Given the experience Chetan had in writing relationship stories, the whole novel should have taken a
maximum of three weeks to write. One surely can not expect better reviews for
such minimum input.
This
disastrous failure clearly shows that time has come where Chetan Bhagat should
stop writing relationship stories - he has written six such novels including
Half Girlfriend. With the reach he has achieved through his first few novels,
he can directly deal with social issues, not under the cloak of love stories.
His fans deserve better novels, not half baked film scripts.
Half Girlfriend - deja vu.
