Revolution 2020

I was confused when I saw the cover of the book. It looked like a love triangle but with the title Revolution 2020??? Being a fan of CB, I was excited about the book and CB didn’t disappoint.

I loved the introduction of kids. It is cute.  The novel revolves around Gopal, Raghav and Aarti who live in the Varanasi. The two guys are appearing for engineering entrance exams. Raghav succeeds while Gopal doesn’t.

            Gopal fails in spite of two attempts for the entrance exams.  Spending a lot on studies (or say coaching) leaves no wealth in his hand. You will feel sad for Gopal as nothing seems going his way. But later things seem to change.  With the help of a politician he starts a new engineering college. The politician as expected is not a clean person and even Gopal becomes corrupt.  In the mean time Raghav fights against the system. And there is a problem; they both loved the same girl. Seems like a bollywod movie script na? The twist in the end may not be digestible to some of the readers.  

The book is interesting. It’s not just a love story. It also has aspects like, ambition, corruption, poverty, politics, passion, power and system. The books depict the problems of small Indian cities like dispute in a family over land, people wanting their children only to be an engineer and the dirty & ugly side of education.

The book will make you think on the system.  A person is not born corrupt, but it the society and the various incidents in his life are the one which make a person corrupt.  If there is any message in this novel, it would be one has to follow his passion in life.

But I have a complaint. I don’t understand why most of the novels which have youth (mostly love stories) don’t go ahead of IITs and IIMs or any other engineering college.  Is it so that students of commerce and arts don’t have interesting lives or it won’t sell like this one’s do. Well to some extent this one has tried going beyond it. But it has the AIEE/JEE element in this.

Overall it is an interesting book and very well narrated by the author. Chetan Bhagat has made INDIA read by his previous novels. Hope this one does the same !