The sentimental books of Chetan Bhagat reflect the concerns of middleclass Indians in their 20s.

By DONALD GREENLEES

HONG KONG - Until about four years ago, Chetan Bhagat was an investment banker distinguished from the workers in suits in this city’s crowded financial district only by his secret hobby.
Mr. Bhagat, then employed by Goldman Sachs, indulged a passion for writing, laboring in his private time on a racy, comedic novel about life on the campus of an elite college in his native India.
Today Mr. Bhagat is still an investment banker, now with Deutsche Bank. But he has become the biggest-selling English- language novelist in India’s history, according to his publisher, Rupa & Company, one of India’s oldest and best established publishers. His story of campus life, “Five Point Someone,” published in 2004, and “One Night @ the Call Center,” sold a combined one million copies.
Less than three days after the release in 2005 of “One Night,” another slim comedy, about love and life in India’s ubiquitous call centers, the entire initial print run of 50,000 copies was sold out, setting a record for the country’s fastest-selling book. Mr. Bhagat has difficulty explaining why a 35-year-old investment banker has had such phenomenal success reaching an audience of mainly middle-class Indians in their 20s. The novels, deliberately sentimental in the tradition of Bollywood filmmaking, are priced like an Indian movie ticket - just 100 rupees, or $2.46 - and have won little praise as literature.
“The book critics, they all hate me,” Mr. Bhagat said .
But his books appeal to young Indian readers. Mr. Bhagat might not be another Vikram Seth or Arundhati Roy, but he has claims to being one of the voices of a generation of middle-class Indian youth facing the choices and frustrations that come with the prospect of growing wealth.
“I think people really took to the books mainly because there is a lot of social comment in there,” Mr. Bhagat said. “It’s garbed as comedy.” Mr. Bhagat’s choice of subjects for his first two books allowed him to explore some perennial themes: the pressures, many of them parental, to get into a top school, earn high grades, get a good job and find the right partner, while still enjoying one’s youth.
Recently, after more than 10 years in Hong Kong, Mr. Bhagat moved with family back to India . He sees a lot wrong with India’s model of economic success. His “One Night @ the Call Center,” destined to be a Bollywood film, is also a critique of a nation climbing to prosperity by answering phone calls from American consumers.
He has just finished writing “Three Mistakes of My Life,” a pun of sorts, this being his third novel.
Set in the western state of Gujarat soon after the bloody sectarian riots of 2002, it deals with issues of tolerance and the confusion Mr. Bhagat believes young Indians feel about religious values.
But true to his form, the story will have a “very modern twist, Bollywood comedy sort of format,” he said. “If you read my books, they are comedies, but very dark.”