Ashok Burman is a worried man. The phone at his Park Street bookshop is ringing off the hook and he doesnt want to answer. They want to know if Chetan Bhagats new book has arrived and I have no answer. The consignments of the book have reached all the other metros but are yet to arrive in Kolkata. We have ordered more than a thousand books and our customers are impatient, says Burman,proprietor of The Family Bookshop. Chetan Bhagats new book,2 States,will be the source of tension for many such booksellers across the country. Impatient fans,incessant phone calls and relentless questions. But they are not complaining. Its good to be harassed by customers; it means we are doing business. God bless the man, smiles Burman. Bless him indeed,for Chetan Bhagat is nothing less than a phenomenon in India. His story of campus life,Five Point Someone,published in 2004,and a later novel,One Night @ the Call Center,sold a combined one million copies. One Night. sold more than 50,000 copies within a week making it the fastest-selling book in the country,and was made into a Salman Khan starrer. His Five Point Someone is being made into an Aamir Khan-Kareena Kapoor film. Little wonder then that his latest release has generated such an furore. His books sell like hot cakes. No other Indian author can even come close to him when it comes to saleability. To give you an idea,let me cite an example. Anurag Mathurs Inscrutable Americans is an all time bestseller for us. But Bhagats books outsell him on any given day, says Raju Burman of Rupa & Co,the publishers of all Bhagat books. Yet,the literary merits of Bhagats books have always been a point of debate. Many feel that his language is too casual and his plots are wafer thin. But I feel he speaks the language of the masses. This is why he is so popular with college kids and even housewives, says Chitralekha Chatterjee a final year student with Bhawanipore College. The fact that Bhagat can truly stake claim to being the voice of the middle-class Indian youth facing the choices and frustrations that an increasingly global India has to offer,makes him unique indeed. Its unfair to compare him with someone like Amitav Ghosh. Bhagat belongs to a different genre altogether. He has no pretensions of being a very literary writer but he is very socially aware, says Gautam Jatia of Starmark. This is probably why he appeals to the youth of the normally snobbish Kolkata too. The city has ordered as many as 40,000 copies of 2 States,an autobiographical novel about Bhagats inter-community marriage,and is waiting for more. There is a lot of buzz about the book in the city, says Raju Burman. The fact that Bhagats books are ridiculously cheap,probably contribute to his popularity in the price-sensitive city. At Rs 95,a Chetan Bhagat book comes cheaper than most magazines. People obviously think that its a better investment. I remember when his last book,The Three Mistakes of My Life,was released they flew off the shelves in a matter of two days. We would say that they sell like newspapers, says Jatia. Then of course there is the Bollywood tag. Even before the release of 2 States,Bhagats Twitter page has been inundated with messages from the likes of Neha Dhupia and Sonam Kapoor,probably because the all want a share of the Bhagat pie. I want to read the book as soon as possible because Im sure that it will be made into a movie within a few years, says Rajarshi Bose,a media student.
