Book Review: ONE INDIAN GIRL by CHETAN BHAGAT

Hey! Wassup? 🙂 I’m back with another book review and this time it is Chetan Bhagat’s new book “ONE INDIAN GIRL”. So I’d to read this novel because it is Bhagat’s and it is about an “Indian girl”. I’m always excited to read his works. Unlike many other people I like his writing and I’m always waiting for his next creation. One Indian Girl is the 9th book of Chetan Bhagat. His previous book Half Girlfriend (Review Here) is very well received by his readers and soon releasing as a movie but it couldn’t impress me much. Just like Half Girlfriend, this book too has a catchy title and has a typical filmy story. Honestly I didn’t like the book maybe because except some points, I couldn’t fully relate myself with the main character Radhika Mehta. Well, I just did not like the end, I mean I’m not kidding but for a second I was like “aray, end ho gayi?” 😛 You know Bhagat has this magic, once you start reading his book, I bet you won’t stop reading till the end. I am not saying it is boring because yeah its not that boring. It’s a good book but what I dislike is the charaters and some dialogues and conversations. I felt like I am reading or watching a bollywood script/movie so just to feel the story, I have imagined like I am watching a Bollywood movie and this movie has a boring climax. But its Chetan Bhagat “magic” that the book broke all the pre-order records on amazon.in 😉

Now come to the book, One Indian Girl is a story of a girl who is average looking, not fair, ambitious, well educated and very successful in her career and she just doesn’t like that conservative and typical thinking of Indian society about girls and women. We are introduced to her past lovers and her current fiancé, and the book is about who she ends up with. She is quite feminist and has an opinion on everything. She makes it sure that she does things which she feels is right without worrying about her family or anyone else. The story opens with a destination wedding scene of  Radhika and Brijesh at Goa. It is an arranged marriage. Brijesh Gulati works for Facebook and is very intelligent and sweet. He has a kind soul. Radhika doesn’t want to get married with Brijesh but she has to because her mother wants her to get married soon. The character of  Radhika is very well narrated by Chetan Bhagat. Radhika works at Goldman Sachs New York office. She has a live-in boyfriend there, named Debashish Sen aka Debu. He is smart and intelligent. But, Debu earns much less than Radhika, so he feels insecure and this ultimately creates problems in their relationship and of course they broke up. It all happens in the flashback of One Indian Girl. The story has technically 3 flashbacks 😀 Radhika decides to resign from the job but her boss offer to transfer her to Hong Kong Office. She agrees as that gives her an opportunity to go away from New York where everything reminds her of Debu. In Hong Kong Office she meets Neel Gupta.

Neel Gupta is smart, handsome, fair and and attractive. He is married and has 2 kids. He is 20 year older to Radhika. Neel and Radhika are the partners at the Special Situations Group in the Hong Kong office. They get attracted to each other and have an affair. Very soon Radhika realized that this relationship has no future so they split up. Again history repeats, Radhika resigns and again she is offered a transfer instead of resignation. She happily accepts it and goes to London. This also happens in the flashback, by the way 😀

Now wedding scene arrives. After 3 years, Debu and Neel, both are here in Goa at Radhika’s marriage. Because they suddenly regretting their decision of breaking up with Radhika and now they want to marry her. So now, we have three guys in the end who want to marry Radhika and she has to choose one guy on which her future will depend. Well, I liked the writing style of Bhagat, its not awesome but it is good better than the last one. At some points I was skipping line because I didn’t want to read the whole thought process. It was quite boring. This book intended to tell the world about today’s successful and modern Indian women, their capacity to take decisions and stand up for their own rights, good and feelings, but it failed I mean not nailed, in my opinion it failed to make an impact in the end or convey a strong message or a real thinking of a girl. It doesn’t really reflect how women really think. Except some chapters that were really interesting to read, the rest of it was really boring. It has nothing much apart from work conversations and having meaningless sex on beach and in bedrooms. One thing I don’t understand, why Indian writers resort to sex to sell their books???? Really, its a SHAME! 😦
Well, The writing skill of Bhagat is good. He has narrated all the characters and events nicely. I read somewhere that “Chetan Bhagat is Salman Khan or Shahrukh Khan of Indian English Fiction Writing.” and I agree with it! You simply cannot resist his books even you don’t like him…agree?  😉 I liked the story but I suppose that the end could have been more better.

So, One Indian Girl is a timepass actually. I simply didn’t like it much. But I suggest you to give it a chance. It was a decent attempt by Chetan to describe the feminism through his eyes but trust me I’m not agree with his “point of view” of an Indian girl. However, I want to highlight that One Indian Girl was definitely not a feminist book. As I said above, at few places, Bhagat has just not justified a girl’s point of view correctly which looks quite fake, boring, provoking and attention-seeking.
In fact, at the climax of this novel, I’m actually searching for the reason “why the book was actually written????” but I found nothing 😀 I liked the part when Radhika tells Debu that it is easy for anybody to say that they support feminism or they want to support girls/women but they are not actually different from the mass when it comes to reality. 🙂 The book seems to have been written for cinema only. I think, Bhagat writes books so that it can easily be converted into a screenplay and made into a movie and he just earns money. This novel is really meant for movie and little for from the normal middle class Indian girls. The story keeps engaging you until you finish it off. But its no way related to the real Indian girls story.

Some interesting quotes from One Indian Girl:

“Women lie about their feelings all the time. It’s amazing how easily it comes to us.”

“You only need the light when it is burning low, only miss the sun when it starts to snow.”

“If it is too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true.”

“Some people are good at taking decisions. I am not one of them.”

Overall it is a good book or I would say a good bollywood script. If you like Chetan Bhagat’s work or you’re a fan of bollywood and want to read a filmy script then go for it! 🙂 If a movie ever made on this novel which I think it’ll be soon 😉 so my movie cast for this book would be-

Athiya Shetty as Radhika Mehta,

Aditya Roy Kapoor as Debashish Sen,

 Karan Singh Grover as Neel Gupta, and

Arjun Kapoor as Brijesh Gulati.

Now, Tell me have you read it? I would love to hear it from you. Do let me know if you have read the book or are planning to do so! If yes, how did you like it? Do share it with me in the comments below as I would love to know! 🙂