Chetan Bhagat, one of Time’s Hundred Most Influential People In the World, needs no introduction.
It is said that in whichever corner of India you go to, you will always find a shop that sells Eveready Batteries, Nirodh condoms and copies of Bhagat’s books (not necessarily in that order).
What Timur did to world history, leaving behind mountains of skulls and altering boundaries of kingdoms, Mr. Bhagat has done to Indian literature revolutionizing it in a way that people never thought possible, breaking the strangle-hold of the ivory-towerist, Humanities-graduate, Proust-reading Illuminati over the domain of English writing with his alphanumeric titles (Five point someone, Two States, One Night, Three Mistakes) bringing literary enlightenment truly to the “pIpL”.
There was a time when Hindi movies were made for men—- working class men, who would settle down in the darkness of the hall with their mates, smelling of sweat and grime. Handkerchiefs around neck and lungis drawn up mid-thigh, they would come to dance, sing, throw chawannis at the screen and whistle at the women on the screen. They couldn’t care less for story arcs and characterization as long as skulls were being cracked, dialogs were being delivered, and women were being drenched. Then things changed. Multiplexes revolutionized the business of movie distribution and audience targeting. The Johar-Chopra-Shahrukh Khan triumvirate cut off the nation’s throbbing testicles and replaced them with a pair of heart-shaped red balloons. Just as Diet Coke pushed out the Rs 1 colored water sold in plastic seen-through packs (also called jaundice test-tubes since there was a good chance of contacting the disease if you let that water cross your lips),old-time masala “movies for men”, non-stylized and formulaic, looked down upon as a “down-market”, were steadily slowly shunted to the low end of the spectrum, consigned to playing in B and C single-screens in the backwaters.
