The Man That Is Chetan Bhagat

Just a few days ago, I was sitting with a friend, chatting, when he told me he'd recently read Chetan Bhagat's latest, 'Revolution 2020', and launched into an explanation of how it was an amazing narrative about love, set in the backdrop of money and power, and then stopped midway to look at me and say, "Tujhe bilkul nahin pasand na woh?" I assume I'd been making irritated expressions and rolling my eyes all through his little 10-second speech.
"Haan, I find him too stupid!" I shot back.
"But he sells", my friend answered back smugly, as if that settled it all.
And who could deny that anyway? Chetan Bhagat sells. And big time too.
But what is the success story? And why is there one anyway?

Having written two odd crappy books, Bhagat shot to fame. Suddenly, a man noone knew nor cared about became the 'youth icon' of the country. Wanna know how the youth thinks? Drop in a little of Chetan Bhagat dramatics. And then suddenly, Chetan Bhagat was, well, everywhere. He was on news channels being a 'youth representative' on vital debates. He had full page interviews in national dailies, and columns in many too, wherein he wrote about, err, the youth. He was at national conclaves, playing the youth trump card again-"Hum aisa chaahte hain, is desh ka har yuva yeh chaahta hai!", he would scream on, being all dapper and smug.

Chetan Bhagat comes across as one of those authors who shot to fame with an irresponsible, ungrammatical, badly written bundle of sheets, sold at a minimal cost so that people could buy it, and dotted with abuses and raunchy episodes so that people WOULD buy it.
When you yield the pen, you know you wield power in your hands.
Using that pen to write about something constructive? Great.
Using it to explicitly gush on about how you slept with your professor's daughter in a book that claims to be autobiographical? Cheap, demeaning, inconsiderate, undignified, and patent Chetan Bhagat.
Apparently youth icon dear has no respect, whatsoever, for any past relationship, nor wishes to keep any aspect of them under the covers, as he continues to bare it all for everyone to see, a new girl, a new story, a new embarassment to the poor woman who made the grave mistake of having known him.

And yet, fame-money-power kept pouring in, and continued to stay there, right at the top of conceited Bhagat's head. All the new attention led him to, somehow, believe that he could manage a book on the sensitive issue of Hindu-Muslim communal violence.
And so, a man who wrote illogical, abusive, raunchy books with a guest appearance or two by God, graduated(?) to a 'Three Mistakes of My Life' (which by the way was illogical, abusive and had Godly references too). Now he was the messiah, out to save the country from communal violence, corruption (that led to his appearance on a News Channel with *mera neta chor hai* tattooed across his forearm. Very mature.), sneaky script stealing producers, and all things evil.

And he keeps trying, harder and harder still, coming up with more ways to grab eyeballs and play to the gallery. To somehow make it to every possible talk show on air, and groan about just how bad a state we are in and how the youth is longing for change.
Too bad, even with all his 'influence', he's just as close to doing something worthwhile as the Power Puff Girls are to being signed as the next Bond girls.