Revolution 2020- a Review
Revolution
2020 – A review
Revolution 2020 is the
story of three childhood friends: Gopal, Raghav, and Aarthi. The story is setup
in the holy-city of Varanasi. Gopal and Raghav are schoolmates from
the childhood and share the same bench in school. Aarthi is also from the same
class. Gopal loves Aarthi from the school days.
The story’s narrator is Gopal. I
am not going to tell you the entire story and be a suspense spoiler.
Gopal comes from a
filmy-Indian-middle-class background. Raghav is from an almost well to do
family, where as Aarathi comes from a kind of bureaucratic and
political family. Three of them have their own ambitions in
life. Gopal wants to be a rich man, Raghav wants to change the world,
Aarthi wants to become an air hostess.
After the failure in getting
through JEE and AIEEE exams, Gopal is forced by his father to repeat the exams
next year. But Raghav secures a good rank and joins the top college in
Varanasi. Aarthi falls in love with Raghav.
What happens when Gopal returns
to Varanasi after his one year stint at cracking the entrance exams is the main
part of the story. Apart from losing his love, he couldn’t find a seat in
engineering to fulfill his father’s dream.
How Gopal chooses corruption as
an aid to become a successful person while Raghav tries to change the
world(read as India) with his revolutionary ideals is what the middle pages of
the book are all about.
In the ending, things kind of
change though, and you will be left to yourself to wonder who is right and who
is wrong. Except for a faint hint in the end, Chetan doesn’t really judge what
Gopal does is good or bad.
Following the tradition of the
latest Bollywood movies, you can find few swearing words which start with
letters b and a and f. I leave it
your imagination to figure out those words. I really wonder whether Chetan
added those words in the drafts after those movies are released or those words
were there from the beginning.
You will miss the witty
observations for which Chetan is known for. Two States has a lot of lol-moments
for the reader. But in this book, even though there are few sentences which
make you lol, the obvious fun factor is missing when you compare this to his
previous books.
The story becomes
too predictive in few places and you might as well skip through
paragraphs at times.
I guess, in some places,
the character development is not handled well. There were not enough
reasons shown to us by the author previously in the book to make us believe the
characters’ actions. The actions come as a surprise, but they don’t
convince us to believe.
The first hundred pages don’t
really add much to the entire theme of the book. It could have been easily
conveyed in less pages without really degrading the overall effect of
the story.
I would have liked the book more
if it had handled the ‘revolution part’ in more detail instead of focusing
more material on the triangular-love-story. May
be Bollywood needs it.
If you are a Chetan Bhagat’s
fan, I am sure you will definitely like this book. But I am not sure whether
you will like it better than any of his previous books.
Even if you are a fan of Chetan
Bhagat, you will be disappointed if you expect a lot of revolutionary stuff
from the book. It is a regular love story with a modern backdrop and written in
a typical Chetan Bhagat style. The book’s title could have been anything else,
for Revolution 2020 is not the major theme in the book.
Four books after his bestseller
debut novel, Five Point Someone, I guess Chetan is unable to re-create the same
magic like he did with his first book.
I think Revolution 2020 is a
good book, but not as revolutionary as one might guess from the book’s title
and book’s back-cover summary. Of course, I don’t expect in people changing the
world just by reading books. But from the book’s title and pre-release
interviews and promotions on the Internet, it is reasonable for an average
reader to expect more ground breaking stuff than a regular
two-boys-love-the-same-girl-love-story sprinkled with corruption in India.
It’s a really good read if you
like reading light fiction.
If you like reading books to
pamper your literary senses, definitely this book is not for you.
If you haven’t read Chetan’s
books before, I would say you better start with Five Point Someone.
If you are too lazy to read
books, then wait, I am sure this book has everything in it to be a Bolloywood
movie.
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