Book Reviews
Bollywood Calling: ‘Half Girl Friend’
After reading Chetan Bhagat’s recent release ‘Half Girlfriend’ one can come to the conclusion that his focus at present is absolutely on the Bollywood than on literature.
Well, I am not blaming the writer because the present day younger generation is more interested in entertainment than enlightenment. Surprisingly, the story is more ‘girlish’ than being ‘manly’. Normally, it is the girl who pines for love and attention and what not but here the boy does the role of a girl. Frankly, today I doubt any boy will take love so seriously for years and go in search of his ‘half girlfriend’.
Money and positions are great levelers in the present day society. So an innocent and Hindi speaking Bihari Prince trying to waste his life in search of a girl who had ditched him sounds positively unrealistic. It is just another fairy tale. The romantic portions are too long and positively getting on the nerves after a point.
The tempo in the first half is a bit racy and the last fifty plus pages on Madhav’s search for Riya in New York is informative. Beyond that one could easily visualize the climax and end.
This book is more like a typical Hindi movie screen play and anyone who wants to make it into a movie has very little to do as for as the changing of the medium is concerned.
I feel Chetan Bhagat must be capable of churning out better novels on the lines of ‘’Five Point Someone’’. But, unfortunately, he had opted to concoct tales on Bollywood masala genre. Sad!
Nevertheless, one has to accept that is what is called the changing of times!
19-Nov-2014
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G Swaminathan
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