Writers feel and writers write!
When you read a book by Chetan Bhagat, you don’t feel like what is written above. The reason I straight away wrote the most important point is, I don’t want to leave the readers of this honest post waiting to read the important points in the middle of this article.
Youngsters, if they want to read a book, have a lot of choice nowadays. They are exposed to an array of books and authors that might interest them. I certainly wanted to use the word ‘overexposed’ because it is the truth. Nowadays you see youngsters reading books at bus stands, railway stations, coffee shops, in colleges and in schools, but the most important question which arises out of such a thing is, are they feeling whatever they are reading?
There is a big difference between a writer and a great writer. I want the readers of this article to know that difference, so that pretentious writers feel the shame which is being bestowed upon them.
I will let you know a thing which I thought and felt while reading Chetan Bhagat. While I was reading one of his books, I felt that the story was being fed into my head, someone was telling me and I was listening. There was no scope for my thoughts to reply to whatever that was written in the book. There was an explanation to everything that was happening which I felt was very unnecessary.
The characters that are often shown in his stories are just being used by him so that they take the story forward till the climax and the book meets an end. The women characters in his books are nothing much than a portrayal of fake womanhood and reminds me of the sleazy content that was made famous by pulp fiction writers like Ved Prakash Sharma and Surendra Mohan Pathak. Bhagat fans! the women in his books do not fight for sexual freedom, they become the prisoners of sex. The truth is destroyed and the lies are sugar coated. All of these things sum up to the concept of literature blasphemy and the shameful irony is that nowadays this is the formula for a successful book. The writers are not the only ones to be blamed, the readers should also be blamed.
The above paragraph exposes the not so enduring writing style of Chetan Bhagat. Let us now talk about a writer which is almost forgotten by the people, people do not read him but they are not aware that whatever books they are reading(I am talking about the books by coming off age writers) has a little bit of him in them, ‘Saadat Hasan Manto’.
Every sentence ever written by him still strikes the readers with a sword of epiphany. Saadat Hasan Manto wrote the truth and served it hot and cold at the same time. His works reveal his personality, they reveal that Manto was a theist and an atheist at the same time. Sane, insane were not just words for him, they were experiences. One can easily call him the Edgar Allan Poe of the Urdu world
Manto in his books did not answered questions, he asked them and asked them with utmost clarity. The clarity which no writer has achieved ever since. Your thoughts are given the permission to express themselves and you are the one who has to answer the questions. His writings can be understood by kids and the older masses and this proves that he has an universal appeal. The women in his stories gradually become the most important part of the stories. Even if there was no woman involved in the story, Manto tried to make the whole story a woman and succeeded in doing that. A quality which is not found nowadays. Inspired by the works of Maxim Gorky and Guy de Maupassant, Manto was arguably the greatest Urdu writer of his time.
If one wants to be a writer, he/she should be very careful with what he reads because if you want to write good you should read good.
Why everybody wants to be a Bhagat and not a Manto?
Final conclusion is this, Let your influences be your guide and choose wisely!
Thank you!
