'Half Girlfriend' by Chetan Bhagat

HALF GIRLFRIEND (HINDI) Once upon a time, there was a Bihari boy called Madhav. He fell in love with a girl from Delhi called Riya. Madhav didn't speak English well. Riya did. Madhav wanted a relationship. Riya didn't. Riya just wanted friendship. Madhav didn't. Riya suggested a compromise. She agreed to be his half girlfriend. From the author of the blockbuster novels Five Point Someone, One Night @ the Call Center, The 3 Mistakes of My Life, 2 States and Revolution 2020 comes a simple and beautiful love story that will touch your heart and inspire you to chase your dreams. 

Half girlfriend is a story of Bihari boy Madhav and Delhi girl Riya, both are teenagers. Madhav belongs to middle class family where riya is from higher class, both have different lifestyle. Madhav fall in love with Riya and propose her. And Riya rejects it because she thinks they are good as friend only.

Riya thinks there is big communication gap between both of them because Madhav can't even speak english properly and on the other hand riya speaks fluent English. Madhav have very common lifestyle where riya don't have to look around for anything, she has everything, nothing to worry.

Coming back to love story, Madhav try to convince her to being her girlfriend but riya rejects his proposal. She wants them to be just friends but madhav definitely wants more.

Then one day, Riya suggest a unique idea of Half Girlfriend. Riya agrees to being his Half Girlfriend (friend cum girlfriend). From here, the new modern love story starts, how they go, how this relationship moves from good, bad and exited things.

Meanwhile, you will see some beautiful sight seen of Patna (bihar), New york and one special appearance of  Bill gates in this story. Also, some bad side of bihar (as backward area) you will be notice in this love story.  

Will Madhav succeed to make riya fall in love with him? Will Riya accept him or not? All these answers are available on this 280 page long book. This love story is beyond Live in relationship and Love at first sight type of love story. Chetan bhagat tried his best to make it unique love story.

Predictable mixture of young India

A simple linear story, rivetingly told employing prose that can make a Hemingway blush – ten years, six novels and a non-fiction book since he stormed in to our literary landscape, the pattern in the novels of Chetan Bhagat, the brave young man who revolutionised Indian writing, is emerging. At a time when syrupy sagas on socialite shenanigans sold a few thousand copies and were bestowed with best seller tags, this unlikely writer in an engineer turned investment banker made light fiction ubiquitous enough to adorn the shelves beside onions and cooking oil at department stores across the country.

Half Girlfriend is Bhagat’s latest fiction offering. Like all previous novels of his, it too has a number in the title and a protagonist whose name is a synonym of Krishna. If citadels of academic excellence like IIT and IIM (both alma maters of Bhagat) and Banaras Hindu University feature in earlier books, it is the turn of Delhi’s St. Stephens now. Neither does the plot attempt anything riskily ambitious nor is there even a semblance of literary pretension. It is the kind of book that a thriller titan from the west, Jeffry Archer, would approve of, for it does what a book is supposed to do per him – tell a good story.

The tale of the encounter between Madhav Jha from rural Bihar and Riya Somani from ritzy Delhi, Stephanians with a shared passion for basketball has much for India’s teenage-twenties crowd to empathise with. It is vintage Bhagat territory of nascent puppy love and forlornness. Bhagat’s audience is culled mostly from the new yuppie generation; the ranks of tech-savvy IT professionals tweeting their dreams and Whatsapping their aspirations. They epitomise the face of new India, where a staggering fifty percent of the population is below 25 years. Chetan Bhagat’s hero, as in most of his other works, is a semi-confused drifter with a self-depreciating sense of humour and an unmistakable vulnerability. This underdog aspect instantly endears the reader to the hero, be he a failed engineer, struggling marketing executive or sports quota entrant in elite college who grapples with English, the language whose snob value can open doors for him. We partake in his foibles as he fumbles along in the treacherous waters of dating and courting females who are often empowered and sure of themselves even as they seethe in their private agonies of untold abuse.

The evolution of Bhagat as a writer is apparent as we arrive at Half Girlfriend. His craft is impeccable, the structure and style of the novel so lucid that the reader is nose-led to the very end, her interest sustained throughout the gradually unfolding drama. The title is indeed intriguing and wins streets ahead of a disappointingly lackluster earlier one like ‘Two States’, so named since the hero and heroine come from two different states of India! What is a half girlfriend – does that denote a platonic relationship or a part-time lover or something else? The whetted curiosity should egg a casual onlooker on to go pick up the book. We get the answer soon enough. Prologue and Epilogue have come to be regular in these novels and Half Girlfriend is no exception. But it goes one step ahead and makes the writer cum original narrator a more prominent character in the tale. His intervention has a part to play in the fortunes of the hero in his perseverant pursuit of initially puerile but later exalted love. There is a looming Bollywood movie all over the book and one cannot be blamed for suspecting that Chetan Bhagat wrote this particular story with a blockbuster movie in mind. Perhaps that could be the drawback of the plot as it is too corny for comfort. The taut suspense of Revolution 2020 is sorely missing here. The probability of it all towards the final stages forces one to draw succor from the telling and the sights and sounds of changing locales even as the end and means pale into sorry irrelevance.

Overall Half Girlfriend is a good book even though it is certainly not Chetan Bhagat’s best. Taken together, his growing collection is an amazing mixture of the tribulations of young India on the move – in campuses, compartments and cafes both in the country and abroad.