ESSAY on CONTROVERSIAL PERSON

CHETAN BHAGAT

-A Controversial Person

Chetan Baghat, a rising star in the contemporary modern Indian literature, is a multitalented personality. He is a novelist, columnist, public speaker and a screenplay writer. His notable works include Five Point Someone, The 3 Mistakes of My Life and 2 States. Most of his literary works address the issues related to Indian youth and their aspirations which earned Baghat status of the youth icon. Chetan Bhagat published his first novel first novel 'Five Point Someone' in 2004 and this very first venture took him to the peaks of fame and popularity. The book depicted the story of an IIT student who considers himself to be below average than all the other students in IIT. This book won the Society Young Achiever's Award and Publisher's Recognition Award. The story was adopted into a film directed by Rajkumar Hirani and starred famous Bollywood stars like Aamir Khan, Madhavan, Sharman Joshi and Kareena Kapoor. His second book was 'One Night at a Call Center' and this too was a great success. This book was made into a movie and was named 'Hello' and Chetan himself wrote the script. The movie was noted by the special appearance of Bollywood star Salman Khan and was an average hit. His next novel has cricket as the major theme. It is named 'Three Mistakes of My Life'. His fourth book is named 'Two States'. Chetan Bhagat's contribution to the field of entertainment is noticeable. He never confined his literary talents to just writing novels. As a responsible social person, he also writes columns in newspapers, citing and dwelling on various social and national issues. Many of his columns were noticed by parliamentarians and triggered serious discussions in the Indian Parliament. He has addressed issues like corruption by sending an opening letter to Sonia Gandhi and also has spoken about the political issues that revolved around Baba Ramdev. He won the Society Young Achiever's Award in 2000 and the Publisher's Recognition Award in 2005. Chetan Bhagat also a found himself place in the Time magazine's list of "World's 100 Most Influential People" in the year 2010.

Chetan Bhagat has been controversy's favorite child. Even an unintentional statement from the author fires up the headlines instantly. Even though Chetan Bhagat speaks his mind, trollers do not forbid him. A defamation suit was filed against the author by the scion of the former princely state of Dumraon in Bihar, Maharaja Bahadur Kamal Singh, for portraying male members of a Royal family as alcoholics and gamblers. Even though there were references from the novel pointed out by the royal family, Bhagat claimed it to be a work of fiction. A defamation case for 1 crore INR was filed against the author. Chetan Bhagat claimed that the plot of the movie 3 Idiots was lifted from his book Five Point Someone and was not given credit for that too. Director of the movie Rajkumar Hirani said at a press conference that he narrated the script to Bhagat and had purchased the rights of the books which gave him the right to modify content according to the film's requirement. Chetan's name was mentioned in the rolling credit at the end of the movie which went according to the contract the author had signed. The country had become intolerant in context to the issues like beef ban, cow-killing, Govt. of India crackdown against foriegn-funded NGOs and killing of Akhlaq in Dadri. Several Sahitya Akademi winners returned their awards to showcase their support against the issues. In this extreme environment of 'intolerant India', Chetan Bhagat tried to sound funny but his tweet on Sahitya Academy Awards triggered the twitter trollers. Most of the times, Twitter has been a tough place for Chetan Bhagat. One of his tweets that questioned, "What do historians do? I am genuinely curious. This happened. Then this happened. Then ok. Ok work done for the day", did not go well with most of the people. A trail of hilarious tweets thawed on his Twitter wall proved once again his hate and love relationship with his followers. Recently, a Bangalore-based author Avnita Bajpai accused Chetan Bhagat of plagiarism. She sued the author for copying her story and developing into his latest novel One Indian Girl. This is the second time he has been accused of being 'inspired' and developing a novel based on some else's story. Recently, The Supreme Court has banned the sale of firecrackers in Delhi-NCR till November 1, and will take into account the impact it will have on air quality. With the sale of crackers being banned in Delhi NCR, Twitter exploded, with an equal number of people who supported the decision and an equal number of people who said that it should have been regulated, but not banned. Diwali usually elicits comments from celebrities, many of them pleas to people to not burst crackers, or not to add to the pollution during the festival.But with the Supreme Court's order, the debates took a different tone altogether. Controversy’s poster child author Chetan Bhagat tweeted that “Banning crackers on Diwali is like banning Christmas trees on Christmas and goats on Bakr-Eid. Regulate. Don’t ban. Respect traditions.” Making it a matter of religion rather than the environmental concern did not go down well with many. Others cheered on Bhagat calling the SC order an insult to Hindu festivals.

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor replied to Chetan Bhagat telling him he was comparing practices integral to a festival with unholy add-ons.

New Delhi’s situation is already not looking too good. According to a PTI report, SAFAR, a central government agency which monitors air pollution said that the situation was poor and forecasted that it was going to deteriorate. Last year, however, Delhi was at its worst with the city blanketed in smog, which led to low visibility and difficulty breathing for more than a week after Diwali, prompting many organizations to take emergency measures. Many pointed out that the idea behind banning crackers wasn't to crackdown on the festival of a particular religion, but minimizing the repercussions felt by everybody, regardless of their religion.het