Hello, I am Himanshi Parmar, student of MK Bhavnagar University. This blog i have written as a response to Thinking Activity, Which is a Part of my academic Work. Which we get after each unit. In this blog, i am going to discuss about some questions related to Chetan Bhagat's novel 'Revolution 2020'. The questions are assigned as a task.
About Chetan Bhagat
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.On April 22, 1974, in Dehli, India, Baghat was born to a traditional Punjabi bourgeois family. His father served as lieutenant colonel in the Indian army while his mother worked in agricultural department of government.He received most of his education in his hometown. Later on also attended Army Public School and Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi majoring in Mechanical Engineering.
His debut novel, Five Point Someone – What not to do at IIT!, was published in 2004.Five Point Someone instantly became both literary and commercial success. Baghat reached at the zenith of his popularity with his debut that was later turned into a critically acclaimed film titled, 3 Idiots (2009). It was followed by his second equally successful novel, One Night At A Call Center.In 2008, he penned The 3 Mistakes of My Life and after he wrote his fourth novel, 2 States: The Story of My Marriage, is a autobiographical novel that focuses on the prevailing issue of interstate marriage in India. (Famousauthor. Org) click to read more.
Chetan Bhagat's works
1) Five point someone
2) One night @ the call center
3) The three mistakes of my life
4) Two States
5) Revolution Twenty20
6) Half Girlfriend
7) One Indian Girl
8) The girl in room 105
9) One arranged marriage murder
Films that are based on works of Chetan Bhagat
1) 3 idiots - Five point someone
2) 2 States - 2 States : The story of my marriage
3) Hello - One Night @ The call center
4) Kai Po Che - The Three mistakes of my life
5) Half Girlfriend - Half Girlfriend
About Novel : Revolution twenty20
Watch Chetan Bbagat's interview about his book 'Revolution Twenty20'.
Revolution 2020: Love, Corruption, Ambition is a 2011 novel by Chetan Bhagat Its story is concerned with a love triangle, corruption and a journey of self-discovery. R2020 has addressed the issue of how private coaching institutions exploit aspiring engineering students and how parents put their lifetime's earnings on stake for these classes so that their children can crack engineering exams and change the fortune of the family. While a handful accomplish their dreams, others sink into disaster.
The author stated that the novel is based on the "rampant corruption" apparent in the Indian educational system, with the choice of Varanasi as a setting emerging through "a special connection to the city" following his visit.He further said "it is one of our oldest cities, and people there now have modern aspirations. I thought the contrast would be interesting. The city also has a lot of character." (Wikipedia) read more about book.
Characters
1)Raghav Kashyap
2) Gopal Mishra
3)Aarti Prathan
4)Gopal's Father
5) Aarti's Father
6) Bishnu - ji
7) Keshav
8) MLA Shukla ji
Question - 1
Social realism in the novel 'Revolution Twenty20'.
Chetan Bhagat captured 'Zeitgeist' in this novel. The novel includes themes like Love, Corruption, Ambition, and Revolution. The story is not just about love triangle among Raghav, Gopal and Arti but Also about current time and about the current social issues, political problems, corrupt education system etc. The novel 'Revolution Twenty20' very well captured present time and youth issues. But before that it is important to understand that what is social realism. According to Oxford Dictionary,
Social realism is the realistic depiction in art of contemporary life, as a means of social or political comment.
In another words, Social realism is a style of art, fiction, movies and plays. It describes the daily life of workers and poor people. Social realist artists try to show people and their lives in a realistic way. This means that they often show things which are not beautiful or attractive.
The entire novel revolves around three characters Aarti, Gopal and Raghav. Here we find love trauma in youth. Aarti is love interest of both Raghav and Gopal. Also Aarti is confused in beginning about whom she love Raghav or Gopal. At the end she marry Raghav and we find Gopal is sacrifice his love for Aarti, and started living traumatic life. This is the problem that most of the youth facing in present time like love affairs, breakups, mental breakdown, depression and all, And glims of it we find little beat in Gopal's character.
In the novel Chetan Bhagat also described about life of Kota. Kota is hub of unacademic institutes where students go for preparation of exams that are hard to crack. Gopal, Raghav and Aarti are school friends, studied at same place but after completing schooling Raghav and Gopal gave exams in which Raghav could crack the AIEEE/ JEE exam and scored a good rank, also got admission to BHU-IT while Gopal cracked the exam but couldn't got good score. So he move to Kota for the preparation of other exams.
'Kota is the capital of IIT coaching classes., lens of .thousands go there, I explained.
Every'year, the tiny' western Indian town of Kota accounted for a thousand, or a third of the total 11T -selections.
Not at this point of novel we find ugly side of education system where students are living uder constant burden of getting admission in well known institutions. The reference of a student who committed suicide is also show how stressful life people are living at kota. The same situations and incidents we find in our own society also.
Kota now had small coaching
shops to coach you to get into the top coaching classes.
Also Gopal's message id is quite sarcastic, as he use 'GopalKotaFactory', here the word factory shows mechanical life of kota people. There are many webseries available in various platforms that are bringing concept of Kota life and environment in it. Like Kota Factory and Aspirants.
Also in the novel we have character of MLA Shukla - ji. Who is perfect blend of corruption. Who taught Gopal all the ways to do corruption and other wrote things. After Raghav, a journalist, wrote an article about the Ganga Action Plan fraud he got impressioned. Ganga action plan is a reflection of true India. Ganga action plan was started in 1986 with the objective of pollution abatement from river Ganga. GAP – Ganga Action Plan is a 100% centrally sponsored scheme. Under this plan, the National River Ganga basin authority was established and declared Ganga as a national river of India.Read about plan.
Eventually this plan ended up in failure with corruption as its major cause. Read about this uncleanliness and corruption in GAP – Ganga Action Plan here.
Along with it we also find other events that are related to social realism in novel 'Revolution Twenty20'. Time line and emotions of youth very well captured by Chetan Bhagat in this novel.
Question - 2
Significance of the title 'Revolution Twenty20'
Revolution Twenty20 is a quite interestingly formed title. In the novel we find 27 time Revolution words is used. Generally, 'Revolution 2020' is a name of Journal run by Raghav to spot light on corrupt people and society. So at one point it seems like title stands against corruption.
There would be no revolution in this country by 2020
"Well we are a small newspaper called Revolution 2020, There are four of us, including me. We don't have much experience but we are passionate about our work!
When one can read the title, he/she might feel that the book is about corruption but it is more about love as it is depicted in the title in very artistic manner.
It seems like theme of love might covered under theme of revolution. But in real there is more about love than revolution so we can say theme of revolution covered under theme of love.
At last we also can compare 'Twenty20' that is in title of novel with T20 cricket match. Might the craze of cricket at that time and the title of T20 matches inspired author to bring that pattern in his book. Direct reference of it is not given in the novel but one can interprete it in that way.
Question - 3
Do you think that an opportunity for a good novel is wasted because the story is told from Gopal's perspective? Can it be better if narrated from Raghav or Aarti's perspective? How would it be better if it was narrated from Raghav or Aarti's perspective?
One can always read one story with various perspectives. And that make different sense and creat different meaning of the same story. In literature we find that one which raises the abstract question can consider as good literature like Hamlet, Waiting for Godot,Oedipus Rex etc. That are considers as a classic literature while popular literature are shallow mainly and comes with lacks high seriousness and sincerity. Chetan Bhagat's works are also considered as a popular literature by many scholars.
The novel 'Revolution Twenty20' is written from the point of view of Gopal. He himself is narrator of the story. Gopal is sharing his breakup story and life story with Chetan Bhagat, the author of the text who is present in the novel as a character. When one can read novel from Gopal's perspective it seems like topical Bollywood kind of love story. Also Gopal Belongs from poor family, his father is farmer andnby doing corruption Gopal becomes director of 'Ganga Tec' engineering college. When we read the story from the point of view of Gopal we find that the story is not getting the depth that it deserve to be classic.
Now Raghav Kadhyap is a scholar person, belonged to an upper-class family. His father was an IITian, and an engineer at BHEL. Raghav himself cracked JEE exam and graduated from BHU- IT. But to follow his pation he becomes journalist because he want to Bring Reformation in society.
‘He feels the revolution begins at home. Society changes only when an individual family norms are challenged.’
He is writing against political scams, corruption and violence in his small journal named 'Revolution 2020'. So if the story from Raghav's perspective, then it might creat more sense and grab its depth. Also instead of remaining just love story might it was been struggle story, and might audience get better understanding about social issues and political problems.
Arti is a girl who caged herself in a role of girl friend and a wife of someone and she is happy being that. While Gopal is narrow minded and corrupt person who himself is a broken in love and seems like he is living into trauma of love, future and regret of past. Most youth in thus era are living similar life of Gopal. Where else Raghav in the era of it, struggling with situation and over come his all the troubles. He also rises as a motivation and iconic figure. So it was been better if the story was written from Raghav's perspective.
My Learning Outcome
If i analyze the main three characters that are Aarti, Raghav and Gopal, then we find that it has symbolic significance.
Gopal - A one of the name of lord Krishna.
Raghav - A name of lord Raam.
Aarti - is a Gujrati or Hindi word that means worship.
So as per my point of views, Raam is considered as a ideal human being in society who is a Theoretician person.and following path of truth.Raghav here is also like this who following path of truth and thinking about people's good.
While Gopal is like Krishna who said that to do something good or achieve something you can lie sometimes also his deeds were not pure and not on the path of religion and Theoretic all the time. Sometimes he use wrong and even lie.
Aarti is similar of the word worship. Who at the end marries Raghav. Which symbolically means that those who is on the right path, are deserve worship or get worship as Raghav got Arti.
I hope this blog will be helpful to you. Thank you.
Images - 7
Videos - 1
References
