He Who Must Not Write A.K.A. Chetan Bhagat

So, Revolution 2020 has come out. It's total bullshit. I haven't read it, of course. I have learnt my lesson after his other books. Take a look below.

So I know I should not waste 84 Rupees on Revolution 2020.

I thought that I had company when it came to hating India's most "loved" author. And I picked up that adjective from his website. So when I come across articles like these, it disturbs me. Let me clear the air shrouding the Chetan Bhagat success a little.

(The statements in bold are more or less borrowed from the article I have linked to)

His books sell lakhs of copies.

I remember crying myself to sleep after watching the movie Ready. Salman's histronics, Asin's blotchy face and the other motley characters dancing to the tunes of Salman made me suicidal. What's worse? Ready broke all box-office records. Which were in turn broken by Bodyguard. Which were in turn broken by Ra.One(I am not even going to link you to the Ra.One trailer. It has had enough promotion!). Do you see where I am going with this?

CB's books are the same.

His style of writing is indeed simple with minimum use of vocabulary.

Simple writing and minimum use of vocabulary, I can deal with. But when I read any sentence written by CB, I feel like taking a Basilisk Fang and shoving it into the book. He just uses a combination of IIT-IIM lin

go, "Indianisms", Hari/Arvind/Rahul(like Tom/Dick/Harry), verbs and connectors(like and,or,etc.). Anyone can write like him. Hari asked for a Paratha free of charge(Indianism) at dhaba(lingo) -> See?

People are able to relate to characters from his novels.

I have never been able to relate to any of the female characters in his books. Is it because they have no personality and they are poorly developed? And when I say poorly developed I mean character-wise, not looks-wise. Because his description pertaining to the physical aspects of the girl is a mind-blowing summary of what Indian men look for in women. So,

CB heroine = Fair skin + Long hair + 36-24-36 42-24-36 + Conservative outside, progressive inside + H-U-G-E libido + half-cooked backstory + crazy as shit

And how about the male characters? We have of course:
1) The Over-achiever who makes Edward Cullen look like the dirt under his shoes.
2) The Village Idiot.
3) The hero who is slightly over-weight, has no balls at all and gets the girl(though why the girl goes for him when we have Edward Cullen in the equation is totally unknown to me)

Yet his books inspire, give us hope and teach us to take risks.

True. They inspire other Indian authors to write books that should be used to start bonfires. They give hope to anyone who can string a sentence with a few words to believe that they can be authors. And they have taught people like me to take risks and buy one more CB book. Atleast I can use them as paper weights.

Funny Story: The other day, my friend and I are walking down the street and she was telling me that she wanted to read Revolution 2020. Although I did want to terminate my friendship with her at that point, I smiled and pointed towards a man who was sitting near a bedsheet laden with Revolution 2020s and other books.

Me: Bhaiyya, kitna?
Bhaiyya: 120.
Me(to my friend): Hah. We can get it for 84 Rupees on Flipkart. Come.
The man starts shouting while we walk away.
Bhaiyya: Madam, 100 mein lelo.
No response.
Bhaiyya: Achcha, 80.
No response.
Bhaiyya: 50!
No response.
Bhaiyya: Achcha Madam, 20 Rupees mein tho lelo.
We burst out laughing!