Study on the Main Characters and Their Mistakes in the Novels of Chetan Bhagat

Chetan Bhagat, referred to more as the youth icon than only a creator is 'the greatest moving English Language novelist in India's history. He has opened the conduits for another development in Postmodern Indian Writing. His name doesn't elegance any Booker list, yet it is found on the lips of each undergrad in India. While the worldwide scholarly harp on the fiction of India's past, Chetan Bhagat has turned into India's most loved essayist by grasping the present. He figures out how to hold his comical inclination regardless of writing on subjects that are really the cruel substances of life. His writing has changed the postmodern literature. As indicated by him, the reason for literature is to raise a mirror to society. Chetan Bhagat has constantly contacted after something new in his writings. His writings have constantly anticipated reality and introduced a genuine picture of life in India. Everybody can interface himself/herself to him the manner in which he conveyed what needs be which is seen effectively. He very skillfully shows his considerations in words so that they are comprehended by readers in a flash that is the real motivation behind why the brains of young age is caught by his writing. He secured an assortment of subjects from life at call center, secularism, and weight in the present education framework, bury – network marriages, corruption and a lot more however he has composed a handful of books. He has a tremendous fan following. Chetan Bhagat is a standout amongst the most celebrated living novelists of India. He was conceived on 22 April, 1974 in Delhi in a Punjabi family. His dad was a military officer and his mother was an administration worker in the agribusiness office. He is hitched to Anusha Suryanarayanan, a Tamil Brahmin. He composed Five Point Someone: What not to do at IIT [2004], One Night @ the Call Center [2005], The 3 Mistakes of My Life [2008], 2 States – the Story of My Marriage [2009], Revolution 2020 [2011], and Half Girlfriend [2014].

Hari Kumar is the narrator of the story. While he talks about others a lot he doesn't really talk about himself. Hari lacks confidence and is very bad at vivas. He is dating Neha Cherian, daughter of Professor Cherian. He isn't very attractive and is a 'loser' like Alok.

He is rich, creative and likes original ideas (like Professor Veera). He cares a lot for his friends and

He is a 'cry baby', fat and a loser as claimed by his friend Ryan. His family is poor and he is in IIT for them. His sister is not getting married as he does not have enough dowries to give the groom's family.

She is the daughter of Professor Cherian and the girl whom Hari loved.

He is a very strict professor, who always disliked Alok, Ryan and Hari because they were not up to the mark students.

Govind: Govind Patel is an ordinary guy with whom anybody can relate. He is very ambitious. His main ambition is to become a businessman as he thinks that, being a Gujarati, business is in his blood. His best friends are Omi and Ish (Ishaan). Govind is doubtful or noncommittal about things. His father abandoned him when he was 11 and his mother runs a small business to make ends meet. Since he is 15, Govind has taken a keen interest in business. He makes extra income by tutoring maths. He continues these sessions even after starting the cricket shop. He is the narrator of this story and the one who makes the title's "Three Mistakes". Ishaan (Ish) is a big cricket freak and a patriot. Ishaan was the best cricketer in his locality and school. He suggests the name of their business as "Team India Cricket Shop". He helps Govind's business by organizing daily cricket coaching camps. Omi is the son of the Hindu priest of the local temple. His family enjoys great respect among the people. Through Omi's parents and maternal uncle (who owns a few shops as a part of the temple trust property), they readily get a place to start their business. Vidya is Ishan's younger sister. She is a rebel at heart and dreams to break free from the constraints of a typical middle-class family and society, to go to Mumbai, do a course in PR and become independent. She, however, despises maths which is required for her medical entrance exams. Ali is one of the students in Ish's coaching classes and a great batsman because of a rare gift of nature which is hyper active reflexes However, he doesn't play much cricket as he gets tired after three or four balls which is a side effect of his extraordinary ability and wants to play on the Indian side. Bittoo Mama is Omi's maternal uncle. Mama runs the trust of the temple and agrees to rent the place to the three friends for the cricket shop. He is an active member of a Hindu political party. He follows the preachings of Parekh-ji, a political-cum-spiritual leader and has complete faith in him. Govind's mom wants her son to pursue a degree in Engineering. She runs a home-made food business. She cares about Govind a lot and supports him well through his hardships and struggles. Ali's father: He is a devout Muslim and works for a secular party. He is a very kind-hearted person who wants Ali to take his education seriously despite his mediocre financial condition. He treats the three friends very well when they go to visit Ali in his house. Overall he is a good person. Fred Li: He is an Australian Cricket Team member and a fast bowler. But he is not currently playing because of back problems. He invites the three friends and Ali to Sydney when they travel to Goa to see India-Australia One Day International and meet him in the stands. He spots talent in Ali and wants to help him getting a chance to be trained in his academy in Australia. Loosely based on Brett Lee

Krish Malhotra: He is a fresh Engineer from IIT Delhi, and pursuing MBA in IIM Ahmadabad, Gujarat. He belongs to a rich, troubled Punjabi family. He is good at studies and a bright student. Ananya Swaminathan: She belongs to a middle-class Tamil family, a commerce graduate, is good at studies, a confident and a sensible person.

Shivkumar Subramaniam: He is Ananya‘s father. He is a literate person. He belongs to pure Brahmin household. He is somehow rude to Krish because

Shyam Mehra, call name Sam Marcy, he is the narrator of the story and we can say that he is the hero of the novel. Throughout the novel we see Shyam narrating his past dates with Priyanka with whom he has had a break up.

Priyanka is the heroine of the novel. To be precise, Shyam‘s ex-girlfriend. Priyanka is an intelligent and a practical girl who is too pre-occupied with her mother who was an extremely important person to her. Priyanka‘s mom wants her to marry an NRI boy and just for the sake of her mother she had decide to break up with Shyam and marry with NRI boy but we can say that still she loves Shyam..

Varun Malhotra, call name Victor Mell, is Shyam‘s friend. He loves Bikes and speeds so friends call him Vroom.

Esha Singh, call name Eliza Singer, is the pretty face of the group.

Radhika Jha, call name Regina Jones, is the only married one in the group. Trying to manage the household activities and her job, her aim is that ―to earn money and settle down on one hand, and manage her mother-in-law on the other.‖ She had married her husband against her parents‘ wishes and always tries to adjust with him and into an orthodox family.

Military Uncle who live alone and works at the call centre to earn little money apart from the pension that he gets.

Gopal: Gopal hails from a poor family and fails to get an admission to the best engineering colleges in the

Madhav Jha, a guy from Bihar Riya Somani, a rich girl from Delhi Rani sahiba, Madhav's mother Shailesh, Madhav's college friend Rohan Chandak, Riya's ex-husband and childhood friend Chetan Bhagat, as himself Bill Gates, as himself

The three friends, Ryan, Alok and Hari they screw up the first class quiz. And while they try to make amends, things only get worse. Then they decided to steal examination paper from the cabin of Professor Cherian. Meanwhile, they got caught.

The biggest mistake that Hari made in the novel was that he fell in love with the daughter of Prof. Cherian and soon the professor found out that he was sleeping with his daughter as he saw him riding his car. Second, he got keys by duping Neha for her father‘s cabin and stole the paper from there.

When the trio of the friends was in Professor‘s cabin for stealing the examination paper, he called his home to know about his father‘s health, due to which they all got caught. After they were caught, and was about to be expelled Alok tried to do suicide, but was rescued by his friends and Prof. Veera.

Technically, Ryan did not commit any serious mistake; expect the stealing the examination paper, he just believed in carefree behavior and always

they tend to get low marks in the examinations.

Professor Cherian was a very controlling and disciplined person. He had a son named Sameer, whom he wanted to be an IIT Engineer, but his son wanted to be a lawyer. For his father‘s sake he tried a lot but failed, due to which he committed suicide on the railway tracks and only wrote to his sister about his failure. This was the biggest mistake that Prof. Cherian did in the novel.

The first mistake that was done by Govind in the novels was that in order to get settled in life and to support his mother he decided to get a shop in the newly opened Navrangpura mall for his game equipment shop. His friends didn‘t agree on his decision but he somehow convinced them. Before the opening of the mall and his shop in 2001 the whole mall was destroyed because of the earthquake that struck in Gujarat in 2001. When Govind woke up and learned about the disaster he ran to the mall and saw that the mall was fully destroyed and there was nothing left. This was the first mistake that Govind did in the Novel. Vidya, who was Ishaan‘s sister, was weak at maths, and then Ishaan asked Govind to teach his sister for the pre-medical exams as he used to give tuitions to the students. He agreed. Then after sometime he started to fall in love with Vidya and so did Vidya. They started dating each other and even got physically intimate. After sometime Ishaan found out this relationship of his friend and his sister, Govind consider this as his second mistake. The third mistake of Govind was that when Om‘s Uncle (Bitto mama) invaded in their place to kill Ali because he was a son of a Muslim Family, and because of the Muslim‘s attack in the Trains and the bomb blasts he lost Omi and his family members in the blast, so he tried to kill Ali because he was son of a secular politician of the Muslim Community. When he finally entered into their place Govind and Ishaan hid Ali in the locker with a phone, but somehow Mama found Ali, Just when he was about to shoot Ali, Govind was right there and could have saved Ali earlier but because of his some selfishness he was awaited back for a split second but then he grabbed Ali and saved him. But in the due course, the bullet somehow went through his wrist and his wrist was harmed which meant that his future career of cricket will be finished, He hold himself responsible for this damage and consider it as his third biggest mistake. and was into the business that was run by Govind and Omi. He was a person who was never serious about his career and very careless, but when he met Ali and found out that he has scope for his future in cricket he was fully into training for him, and asked Govind to teach him and help him through his studies. But he was much more concerned about his own career, he just stay in his house doing nothing. He was very possessive as a brother, when he learned that his sister is in affair with his friend Govind he got very angry and then after knowing that she is pregnant he even fought with Govind and stopped talking to him.

Technically speaking Omi didn‘t do any major mistake. He was a kind of supporting person for his friends and helped them to establish their business by vacating a place for the shop through his Uncle.

Bittoo mama was a active Hindu politician. He helped Govind, Ishaan and Omi to establish their business and in many ways but when he lost his nephew (Omi) in a bomb blast in train, he went very furious on the Muslim Communities and Ali was one of the Muslim politician‘s sons. So, he decided to take revenge on families of Muslims leaders and kill them. After killing his parents, he then determined to kill Ali. For this he went to Govind‘s place and tried to kill, but Ali was saved by Ishaan and Govind, and Bittoo mama was killed.

Krish was a good student, but in his graduation year, he used to mess up with his professor and was a bit mischievous. He used to like Rashmi, daughter of his professor. But he used to have discipline issues with Krish, and when he found about the affair, he decided to get his daughter married to someone else, when Krish asked his father to support him as he really use to love Rashmi, his father denied and even slapped him. When Krish‘s mother tried to console him, he used violent gesture to her. By seeing all this Krish became very angry as he always had beaten and violated his mother. He went into the room and he slapped his father, this was the worst thing he did in his life. The second mistake he did was he tried to console his mother by saying that you can control once she got married to him. Ananya listens to this

Vikram was a suspended Army officer. He was very violent, never talked to his wife and son with love and compassion. He even raises hands on his family. He tried to open many businesses, but drastically failed due to his behavior and attitude. He was never there when his son needed him or his wife needed him. This was the reason for which his family stopped respecting and considering him.

Kavitha did love marriage with Vikram, but he changed after it, he uses to beat her, scold her and raise hands. For this reason she had developed a feeling that love marriages are not successful and his son should not marry a Tamil girl out of her community. She even hated Tamilians personally thinking that they are cunning. She insulted Ananya‘s family many times and humiliated them by saying that Tamilians are black. She didn‘t liked Ananya and always wanted to part his son‘s way from her.

Shyam was a person who was low at confidence. He had always supported Priyanka to manage her relationship with her mother as there were many differences between them. He lacked guts and that was the prime reason for which he had breakup with Priyanka. He was very talented and potent in his work, but he always gets downtrodden by his boss Bakshi. Who never let him succeed and get any promotions, Bakshi was a major villain in the novel.

She was a confident girl, but she was most influenced by her mother‘s wish. Her mother always wanted her to breakup with Shyam, because he worked at a call center. She wanted her to marry some NRI. For her mother Priyanka broke up with Shayam and agreed to marry Ganesh.

Vroom never told Esha about his feelings that he used to love her.

promised her to give a chance for modeling and asked her to be intimate with her. When she did what he asked her to do, he cheated and refused to offer her the role. This was Esha‘s biggest mistake.

The first mistake of Radhika was that she had married against her parent‘s. After the marriage she had to do job and work at home all along. The second mistake was that she trusted her husband a lot but he was a real jerk as he was having a girlfriend even after marriage.

Military Uncle was a strict man and spoke less, due to his such behavior he had issues with his son and grandson.

The mistake that Gopal made was that he didn‘t pass in his AIEEE Entrance Exams. Then when he started to study in Kota Coaching Classes for the Entrance Exam, he was distracted very much as he felt isolated there. He missed Aarti, but Aarti a kind of started to ignore him and after sometime she revealed that she is in relationship with Raghav which shattered him from inside. For this reason in his second attempt too he failed. His father died of the trauma. After that he came back to Varanasi and for becoming successful in life, he got in touch with MLA Shukla and entered into the world of corruption. He uses the legally strangled land of his uncle to manipulate and build the college with black money. He gained power and position due to corruption. This is the biggest mistake of Gopal in the novel. Gopal also tried to force himself on Aarti to accept his love.

Raghav betrayed Gopal, his best friend for Aarti. He knew it that Gopal used to love Aarti, but when he went to Kota he became in relationship with Aarti.

The mistake that Aarti made in the novel was that she left Gopal for Raghav as Raghav was a more successful and talented than Gopal. When Gopal made the College and became successful and Raghav was not able to give her proper time she returned back to Gopal and she had physical relationship with him just because Raghav was not

The first mistake that Madhav made in the Novel was that he listened to his friends who provoked him to force Riya to have physical relations with him to prove that she considers him as his boyfriend. So he forced Riya and unintentionally hit her when she refused to do so.The second mistake was that he tried to kill himself when he came to knew about Riya leaving and her disease,. Even without trying to find out the whole truth.

She came from a messed up and rich family. The biggest mistake of hers in the novel is that she agreed to marry Rohan, his childhood friend and son of a family friend, by leaving her college in between, but it turned out to be a fail marriage, and she got divorced. The second mistake was that she lied to Madhav that she is suffering from some disease and she is going to die and left Madhav alone. She never acknowledged that Madhav loved her a lot.

She was a mother who was very possessive about her son. But in order to stop her son from marrying Riya Somani as she was a divorcee, she said bad words to Riya, due to which Riya left Madhav and lied to him that she has to leave him as she is dying from an incurable disease.

Rohan was a spoiled rich brat, who longed to marry Riya Somani. But after he was married to him, he misbehaved with her. He raised hands on her and even her mother slapped Riya. In short he turned out to be an abusive and violent husband, which proved to be a reason to his divorce.

The writer has the power to demonstrate the characters that speak to the whole society in one way or the other way. By presenting the diverse characters in the entirety of his novels, the writer has made the genuine circumstance of the present society. Since the youth have the power to snatch any issues of the society. The writer has demonstrated the issue of the students in the 'Five Point Someone', The superfluous wants in 'One Night @ the call center', the covetousness of the present youth to end up

As a creator with perception, Bhagat has taken up many dull territories of society with a conventional youth as the focal element to pen down his fiction. Every one of his stories are basically about different disturbing issues of contemporary milieu, how an individual existed, endure and sometimes got overwhelm in the given scenario. He intentionally presents the plausible and conceivable characters, all things considered, circumstances. He additionally makes invented circumstances around genuine characters. The Characters of his Novels are unique in their own ways, they make mistakes but overcome them and be better in their own terms.

Bhagat, Chetan (2004). Five Point Someone .New Delhi: Rupa & Co, 2004. Print Bhagat, Chetan (2005). One Night @ the Call Center. New Delhi: Rupa & Co, 2005. Print. Bhagat, Chetan (2011). Revolution 2020. New Delhi: Rupa & Co, 2011. Print. Bhagat, Chetan (2008). The Three Mistakes of My Life. New Delhi: Rupa & Co, 2008. Print. Bhagat, Chetan (2009). 2 States. New Delhi: Rupa & Co, 2009. Print. Bhagat, Chetan (2014). Half Girlfriend. New Delhi: Rupa & Co, 2014. Print

Research Scholar of OPJS University, Churu, Rajasthan