New Delhi : Best-selling author Chetan Bhagat has revealed the cover and a “movie-style promo” of his new book “The Girl in Room 105” — “a funny kind of thriller” about a Kashmiri Muslim girl and a Hindu boy — in a Facebook live on his fanpage on Monday.
The book, published by Westland, will be released in October. Terming the book as “not a Chetan Bhagat love story”, the author pointed to its “an unlove story” tagline .
What’s interesting is that Bhagat also released a “movie-style promo” for it, reasoning that youngsters love videos, but the idea is “to bring them back to books”.
The story is about “a boy who is trying to unlove his ex-girlfriend and gets involved in something bigger”, said the “2 States” and “One Indian Girl” author.
He went on to say it is about a boy, Keshav Rajpurohit, who is from an IIT and teaches in a coaching centre, and is trying to “unlove his ex-girlfriend” Zara, a Kashmiri Muslim.
The dramatised promo has the lead, Keshav, asking his audience: “Have I told you my dad is a senior member of the RSS?”
The two-minute-long promo shows him drinking one night as he receives a message from Zara and goes to meet her upon her asking.
However, in the confusion about whether Zara sent those messages, the promo ends, leaving “an element of surprise” for the audience, as Bhagat put it in the 25-minute Facebook live.
He said people will love the suspense and humour in the book, because it is “a funny kind of thriller” — “a mystery but a funny mystery”. The book cover reveal comes after Bhagat invited his fans to #GuessTheTitle during social media contests.
Answering questions from viewers, Bhagat said the “unloving part” of the story comes from him.
“I find it very difficult to get over people. I just can’t move on. How can you move on when your heart is attached to someone,” he said.
“How can you unlove? It’s not like unplug.”
Asked about why he changed his genre, Bhagat responded that one cannot keep repeating the same formula just because “one thing is a hit”.
Bhagat also answered a question about the protagonist’s name — Keshav — which is in line with his practice of naming his lead characters after Krishna.
“Krishna’s name is taken billions of times when you make that small change in a name,” he said, adding it is a not a conicidence that his heroes’ names have been based on Krishna since the last eight times.
A viewer asked Bhagat if a movie can be expected, as his books have continuously been cinematically adapted.
The movie will come later and my readers are more important, Bhagat said, adding that he likes to keep books exciting.
He said “The Girl in Room 105” can be pre-ordered online on Amazon. The book will hit the stands in October.
—IANS
Reverse “love jihad” or mainstream “ghar-waapsi”?
Intellectuals prefer facts/genuine history/ scientific documentaries/ life biographies of inspiring people to ‘fiction fantasies’!
Bhagat is smearing the reputation of modest Muslim girls as if they are all ‘liberated’ girls who wear provocative dresses and have adulterous dates and affairs before marriage — which is absolutely far from the common practice of modest religious girls who are also well educated and stay chaste till proper marriage/nikah and thereafter.