I read this book (if you can call it that) a few weeks ago and thought jotting down my opinion of it.
Revolution 2020 is the fifth book written by India's most celebrated and popular "English language author" Chetan Bhagat. Personally, I am not a big fan of his writing, on the contrary, I quite dislike it. However, I accept that I have read all his books. The question is, if I do not like anything about the books he writes, why do I read them? Simply because, they are no-brainers and easy to understand. So, if you are in the mood of reading some very light-hearted books, which do not require you to apply even an iota of the gray matter present inside your head, then I would recommend you pick one of his books and read. I am dead sure that after you are done with his book, you will crave to read something intelligent and worthy.
So, coming back to the book. If I had to describe it in a single sentence, that is, if I had to write a review on twitter, it would say:
"Revolution 2020 is a readymade Bollywood script, waiting desperately to be made into a masala movie by some celebrated Indian director."
The book is a love triangle between three childhood friends—Gopal, Aarti and Raghav. Predictably, one of them is poor, lives with an old and ill father, and has only enough money to have two meals a day. The other two are from well-off families, but never let their friend feel inferior. Now, the two guys want to become engineers, and obviously slog hard to get admission into IIT. The rich friend cracks it while the poor one doesn't. As it happens in most of the Hindi films, the girl also falls for the rich friend. After this, the book is nothing but a tale of love, betrayal, infidelity, and sacrifice. There is a hero, a villian and a damsel in distress.
There are a few positives in the book. First, the story is set in Varanasi, and the author has given a good description of this holy Indian city. He has, to some extent, tried to describe the emergence of a modern Indian city from the religious and traditional city of yesteryears. It is interesting to read how a city, which is considered to cleanse a person from all his/her sins and open the doors of heaven for people, is itself so dirty and corrupt. The other thing I liked about the book is the way Chetan Bhagat has shown the extent of corruption at various levels in the Indian education system. Although the explanation is very simple and straightforward, I, for the first time, understood the reason behind the sudden spurt of private engineering colleges at every nook and corner of India. What goes on behind the scenes, how each person is bribed, basically the whole corporate business of education has been described. It was a little shocking to read that even teachers are bribed to teach in these private colleges. Thirdly, the book also gives a glimpse of a student's life during the pre-engineering entrance examination phase. How a student's whole life suddenly depends on your rank in various exams, how the so-called "coaching centres" make money by showing students the dream of getting into an IIT or an equally good college, and what all do most of the students—who are not able to crack the exams—have to go through. I could distinctly remember the time when I was going through the same. The stress, the expectations, the joy, the disappointments, everything came alive while reading this part of the book. As far the positives go, that's about it.
Overall, the story is very mediocre. It seems that the author has written it simply to please some hot-shot director/producer like Karan Johar, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, and Yash Chopra, to rope in two Khans, and a glamorous actress, and make a Bollywood potboiler out of it.
Further, to give a modern feel to the book and supposedly "connect" with the readers, the author has used too many profanities. The "F" word has been used liberally throughout the book (once in every 2–3 pages), irrespective of whether it is required. There are also some common Hindi expletives used at the same time, to give some characters a rustic feel.
Also, as is a routine in all Chetan Bhagat novels, a love-making scene has been written, just to please the average reader. Although it seems to be an integral part of the "plot", in my opinion it was not needed at all.
I would give the book a rating of 4 out of 10!
