'Don't obsess about film adaptations'

It's showtime for Chetan Bhagat again as he gets ready with his fifth book, Revolution 2020: Love, Corruption, Ambition that will hit stands this October. The bestselling author talks to Subhash K Jha about the new book and his earlier works being turned into films.

Your new book is called Revolution 2020. The title suggests an epic quality to the tale. Is this your most 'epic' book to date?
It is a somewhat grand title, and at some level it represents the grand aspirations of one of the characters. However, it still is, at its heart, a love story about individuals. Yes, compared to my other books, it is somewhat larger in scope.

The novel's theme suggests a triangular love tale against a socio-political backdrop. What has prompted you to try this format?
I became involved with national issues, especially when I started to write columns two years ago.  Education and Corruption became the two causes I wrote about the most in my opinion pieces. As I delved deeper into understanding India, I felt a revolution was inevitable. To explore that idea more, I had started writing Revolution 2020 two years ago, even before the revolution in Egypt. Quite amazingly, the book is coming out at a time when we have some early signs of a revolution in front of us.

You are also a social thinker and columnist. How much of the socio-political upheavals outside influences your fiction?
It is inevitable that some of my thoughts about social issues will creep into my stories. However, I am very strict about not indulging in social messages too much. A story needs to be entertaining and be able to connect with the readers foremost. If a social thought can fit into that, I incorporate it.

Full interview here Rediff

The booking window

Screen adaptations of books usually need to add lashings of spicing to the plainness of the printed page

Aravind Adiga’s hugely enjoyable novel Last Man in Tower (if the adjective enjoyable can be used to describe an account of one man’s lone battle against rapacious neighbours and a powerful builder) is crying out loud to be made into a movie.

Screen adaptations of books usually need to add lashings of spicing to the plainness of the printed page; Adiga already has flavour by the ladlefuls. He portrays the city as a breathing, hissing sentient being, and his richly atmospheric descriptions of the housing society that former schoolteacher Murthy seeks to prevent from redevelopment, as well as Mumbai itself, are purely cinematic.

Last Man in Tower is supposed to be a contemporary tale but the story and characters are reminiscent of parallel films from the 1980s. Was Adiga among the thousands of Indians who plopped down before Doordarshan on Sundays at 1pm in the old days to watch socially conscious regional language cinema? The book harks back to films like Tabarana Kathe, in which Charu Hasan wages a Camus-worthy battle against governmental bureaucracy for his pension. Or Veedu, starring Archana as a middle-class woman trying to buy a house. Or even the films of Saeed Mirza that depicted the travails of the working class in Mumbai. Most of all, the novel reminded me of Mahesh Bhatt’s Saaransh, one of the director’s finest movies. Anupam Kher’s schoolteacher Pradhan, who is mourning the death of his son, finds a reason to live when his tenant, who is pregnant by the son of a Bal Thackeray-like politician, wants to keep her baby. Adiga’s Masterji too is haunted by the past like Pradhan, and perhaps Kher, who started his acting career with Saaransh, could be recruited to play yet another schoolteacher fighting the good fight in another time.

Full report here Mint