The third state- Pure Pleasure..

Its 1.45 am and I am awake. With only the creeping crickets and my dad’s intermittent snores for company, I am pushing myself – one more chapter, one more City...
I hate Chetan, he always does this to me and I end up feeling terribly drowsy the day after.
What differentiates a Chetan Bhagat offering from the rest of the crowd is this magnetism that captivates the readers. After three failed attempts to put the book away, I succumb to the temptation and I have no option but to finish it right away. Just like the smooth Blue Label that my friend wanted to leave it for the next celebration but couldn’t resist sipping till the last drop!!!
Man, this guy knows how to write. He is the Sanjeev Kapoor of urban literati, the offspring of a mating between Adoor Gopalakrishnan and David Dhawan. With his writing nib on the urban youth’s nerves, the realism is marinated with simplicity and peppered with wit and I savour it to the last with the periodic grins.
Love marriages around the world are simple:
Boy loves girl. Girl loves boy. They get married.
In India, there are a few more steps:
Boy loves Girl. Girl loves Boy. Girl's family has to love boy. Boy's family has to love girl. Girl's Family has to love Boy's Family. Boy's family has to love girl's family.Girl and Boy still love each other. They get married.
.... goes the synopsis of this ridiculously predictable, but immensely entertaining book (“2 States- the story of my marriage”).
Although it begins with Krish our Punjab da puttar- protagonist being referred to a psychotherapist as he is deprived of sleep, has refused to eat and googled best ways to commit suicide (obviously because Ananya , the Tam Bram has ditched him), the climax is as clear and obvious as the result of a finals involving India.
But the fun of travelling is not in destination but the journey. The ups and downs that Chetan takes a reader through are a pakka paisa vasool... Don’t get surprised if you get the feeling of watching a Farhan Akthar movie, because it is what it is... fun, urbane with situations that you can relate to, and tongue in cheek one-liners that give you a grin once every 343 seconds. At the end of the 260 odd pages, you end with a warm heart wishing the book had a couple of hundred pages more...
Coming from IIT D and IIM A alma mater, I think an inverted normal curve is what Chetan was trying to fit his writing to. I became an instant fan of Chetan Bhagat when I read his ‘Five point someone’, a definite treat for everyone especially to the ones who’s come through the grind of a professional college. ‘One night at a Call Centre’ was a decent read, but eagerly waiting for ‘3 Mistakes of my life’ seemed more as mistake of my life.
So when I came to know that the fourth book was waiting to be released during Diwali, I only hoped that the curve had troughed and the diwali fire-works would light up the up-ward moving worm. And I must say, he didn’t disappoint. This is, if not the best, truly a better work of his with the trademark Chetan Bhagat wit water marked on each sheet. When the protagonists are in IIT or IIM, you can rest assured that it’s going to be a hell of a ride..
The book is written in Units with Cities as back-drop, so you have Ahmedabad where the boy meets the girl and falls in love, then you have Goa where the two families go to understand each other, or rather make the others understand them. Then you have a tick-tock between Delhi where the Punjab da puttar tries to impress his family n relatives to accept the madrasin and then Chennai where he tries to impress her relatives and then back to Delhi where she tries to impress his relatives and then Chennai where he makes his last ditch effort to save the tottering love life, and then Delhi where he returns dejected and then finally Chennai where the two families meet for the Marriage.
The book is filled with the loud Punjabis, for whom anybody who hails from south of Vindhya is a Madrasi, and Timid Tamilians who can’t spell ‘fun’ (fully filmi !!!). (Disclaimer: the book is blatantly racial and not meant for anybody who is even remotely regionalist). Pathetically trivial but hopelessly romantic, the sweet talk between the lovers is sure to remind you of your first love. By the end of the book, you’d wish you had a Krish or Ananya in your lives.
By no stretch of imagination, is this book going to win an International book of the year award, not even a Ganganahalli English society best author award, (the characterisations are stereotyped, the plot trivially clichéd pot-boilerish) still it will award the publishers with enough cash to literally laugh their way to the banks. The success of this book is the tom & jerry feel, you know that at the end of each series jerry wins, still you wait to watch till the end.
One thing this book has surely done is to re-kindle the book worm in me which was sent to exile by the idiot box and the Infobahn.

You can catch Chetan Bhagat at www.chetanbhagat.com