I think of highly “intellectual” people who LOVE Amish Tripathi (AT) for the “Shiva” trilogy and HATE Chetan Bhagat (CB) for all his writing as hypocrites. Note that I’m NOT talking of people who love the book Shiva trilogy and hate CB books. No, I’m talking about people who love/hate the authors for their “writing style”.

Before I proceed to explain why, I should make my stand clear: I like the Shiva trilogy (but not necessarily AT’s writing style), and I’m not really a fan of CB’s books or writing style, but I do believe that they hold content that connects with the ornate-vocabulary-deprived common people, so I don’t “despise” them - they’re just not to my liking.

Back to the point: why do I call highly-intellectual Indians hypocrites in this case? A comparison of AT/CB books (from my perspective):

• Content:

  • CB: revolves around youth. Maybe considered repetitive. Original, if nothing else.

  • AT: based on India’s “awesome” ancient mythology (which new intellectuals are so eagerly growing fond and proud of)

• Writing style:

  • CB: casual, not high on vocabulary difficulty (Having read scores of foreign author books in school, I admit I find it dull, as no doubt so many of his sworn detractors). But it connects with the large population which hasn’t had a chance to hone their English so well

  • AT: mimics (in terms of vocabulary) some of the war classics with a distinct Indian flavor (IMO). Writing style still seems casual, so I wouldn’t really rate it much differently than CB.

Of course, despite the similarity, it is okay to like one of the two, based on personal preference (like liking Mythology over CB’s genre). All I am opposed to is the mindless “CB-bashing” that I see raging on Twitter/Quora. I’m sure if you asked most of the people “Why?”, they’ll only be able to argue, “Obviously! He’s Chetan Bhagat! He sucks!”

Because heck, it’s so uncool and average-English-class to read CB. We’re the elite. We’re cool.

[Disclaimer: I’ve no affiliation with Chetan Bhagat. I’m not even his fan. I’ve just read one of his books, no more, because I’ve found my reading preference to be different. But I totally respect the fact that he’s made “reading” possible for SO MANY others who connect to his simple writing and wouldn’t continue if it had the amount of vocabulary Salman Rushdie uses.]