Prove Your Point!!

Interesting part of belonging to a group or a society is that every one is one of their kind. And this is exactly what gave us our new concept of the PRO-ANTI Articles on the same topic. From this Edition, every time we will bring to you one chosen topic on which you will read or see about two different point of views. All we require from your side is a vote- Who was better or right! Not a tough task, is it?

For this week we begin with the topic-

‘Whether the contemporary Indian youth love story writers like Durjoy Dutta, Chetan Bhagat, Ravinder Singh appeal to masses?’ Our Girl Pia Roy stands FOR and Shivali Singh stands AGAINST the topic.

FOR (by PIA ROY)-

LOVE STORIES FOR ONE AND ALL..

“There are two kinds of writer: those that make you think, and those that make you wonder.”

This is the perfect description of writers like Durjoy Datta, Ravinder Singh etc because they are the authors who help you to wonder. Durjoy Datta is an Indian author who writes romance fiction with a smutty edge, who deals with extreme emotions and total literary obscurity almost simultaneously. His first book- Of Course I love You !- was published when he was twenty-one years old and was an instant bestseller. His successive novels- Now That You’re Rich !, She Broke I Didn’t! , Ohh Yes, I Am Single! , You Were My Crush! and If It’s Not Forever – have found prominence on various bestseller lists. Mr. Datta’s six books have sold 1.5 million copies since they first came out in 2008. The high sales figures are only one sign of Durjoy’s success.

On the other hand there was another book that when released made an huge impact on the brains and hearts of our youth. ‘I Too Had a Love Story’, the first book by Ravinder Singh also considered a true story, made almost every shed a tear with the beautiful line –

“She died, I survived. And because I survived, I died each day.”

The thing is, you don’t need a Shakespearean language to feel love. All you need is a simple story woven with emotions to make you stir inside. With writers like these people of our nation specially youth connects well. Now there are so many you see everyday in a metro with a book in hand. Its an easy, interesting read to them. The fact cannot be disregarded, they have got masses into reading.

As a reader whenever I read their books I get so involved in it that it seems to be that it’s my story. They are young authors who have achieved success at an early age. According to Durjoy,The ground rule of writing is that you should write something you would read and he goes by it.The first book was more or less autobiographical though it’s an exaggerated account.

His books are always about relationships because it’s something that comes very naturally to him so he writes about them.His co-authors are females because The co-authors become stakeholders in the book’s success or failure and hitherto they become your biggest critic and maybe even your biggest admirer.

They are young, they talk our language, they have caught hold of our nerves and the way they are read and loved, they ain’t going anywhere.

AGAINST ( by SHIVALI SINGH)

Downfall of the present day Indian Love Stories

I know very well that after reading this post I am going to generate a long list of haters for myself, but well in any case I have to share my personal opinion (a task assigned to me you see). These days everybody is gaga over the predictable and filmy plots of the new era Indian novelists like Chetan Bhagat, Ravinder Singh, DurjoyDatta, Nikita Singh to name a few. Their novels seem to generate a large furore amongst the teenagers with superbly raging hormones. Well me being a fan of Austen and Bronte won’t be knowing about the new age romance, right? Maybe but after reading Chetan Bhagat’s first novel Five Point Someone I couldn’t bother reading One Night @ the Call Centre. Though some people say I missed the new age novel theme and stuff but trust me when my friends started discussing about how they liked ‘the God concept’ in that one….. I literally paced away from there just to reinstate my sanity! I mean how can one write such a filmy plot just to get the audience to have something light to read? It might just be the new trend to make your novels sell. But remember the old saying? Great things don’t have to showcase their worth to anyone! (P.S. It was modified by me here)

Fine, I have got a confession to make here, even I may not be such a serious reader that I am trying to portray here but I can judge a novel to some extent. I mean I don’t want to stress my mind while pursuing my hobby all the time.I can’t read Dan Brown all the time (yeah I started with Inferno; but I couldn’t continue further and left it midway). I enjoy light reads too but no I don’t search for romantic and flimsy movies’ scripts for reading. Ya I have read Twilight series and I could say I am a fan too but not of the so called ‘eternal love story’. I liked the way Stephenie Meyer penned down her books, the fantasy fiction part you can say. She did create a totally different world. But if given a chance to choose between Twilight and Jane Eyre, I would choose the latter. Too much of a contradictory person right? Yep you could call me so just because I don’t have a particular perspective of looking at things. I tend to go in all directions. Nothing is fixed for me.

Last year one friend of mine literally started crying In front of me while telling about how I Too Had A Love Story by Ravinder Singh was ‘touching’! And that was when I had decided never to touch this book! Yep I know how absurd it sounds but I want to enjoy my hobby and not get so deeply involved in it, that I go crazy and start shedding big droplets from my eyes whenever I get the chance! And here you guessed it right too I might not be a big fan of such emotional romantic stories. The novel, P.S. I Love You by Cecilia Ahern was termed too depressing by me and I left it only after reading some ten pages. Die hard romance fiction fans laugh at me for this! My reply to them is almost same every time “Don’t fret I am still a girl though!”But these high on emotional drama things are just not my cup of tea.

So when my team asked me to write an article against the current trend in the Indian novel writing department I did have some apprehensions. Mainly because for reviewing the writing style of these books I needed to have read them properly first (which I couldn’t in any case). While reading about them on net I did like some parts of the novels but eventually I realised ‘Hey this could be like the Karan Johar movie!’ . So that is when I thought of the writing style seriously. I can say that to some extent the adulterous stuff and the rosy painting of the word ‘love’ could be highly overrated here. It is like watching some episode of Emotional Atyachaar, when your parents are not around, where you know they will have something cheap and vulgar in their episodes and the ‘love’ word has no meaning other than having a gf or bf and all the stuff related to that. The novelists want to cater to needs of the teenagers’ raging hormones and end up writing silly adult dramatic love stories. The classical style of writing which receives much recognition is no more to be seen. Our very own Shakespeare; if alive, would have got a major heart attack while reading any of these novels!

Dear Austen, thankfully you were saved from reading the present day love stories. But it is also true that the present day definition of ‘love’ is vastly different from your times . So maybe these novelists are just trying to leave a mark in the history of writing; by writing about today’s love affairs. Our future generations might call them great novelists (maybe!) because till then the love stories’ genre might have downgraded more…..well who knows of the future?! Seeing today’s plight of writing style we are not far away from the times when love stories would be like a porno journal only (like some Fifty Shades of Grey series). Talking of today, Austen’s love stories are a classic till date and comparing her novels and writing style with the modern era novelists like Ravinder Singh, DurjoyDatta and so on will be a disgrace to her.

So I guess till the time such novels have a huge fan following we definitely know the state of current literature which might actually be representing the current societal scene. But I am sure many hard core reading fans would agree with me that Shakespeare, Austen, Bronte sisters, Eliot to name a few were all legen-wait for it-dary…’Legendary’!. No novelist matches them from the modern era and none could ever if the same writing style continues.