 "Here's what happened when Chetan Bhagat asked Twitterati for photos of 'One Indian Girl' in beautiful settings")
Sometime on Sunday, 9 October, Chetan Bhagat tweeted this:
#OneIndianGirl in Mykonos, Greece. Send me pics of the book in a beautiful backdrop. Will RT best ones. Let's see your phone camera skills! pic.twitter.com/nGAF9QiFd0
— Chetan Bhagat (@chetan_bhagat) October 10, 2016
The following is a fable-like imagining of what happened next: Once upon a time, there was a man. This man had earned great wealth by working for a global conglomerate. But he wanted more. He wanted to be a writer. And so the man wrote. He wrote of call centres, and the three mistakes of his life, the two states his wife and he hailed from, and halved girlfriends (which made some magicians’ assistants think the book was about them, and they rose up in protest at being referred to in such terms). The man’s books sold by the dozens, by the hundreds, then the thousands. But the man was not satisfied. He wanted more. He wanted to write nothing less than a book which would give voice to one Indian woman. And so he did, and felt good. Basking in its success on a trip to a sunny and pleasant island, he wondered: Why not see just how much the people loved his book? So he captured an image of his book, as it lay there on a low wall, all dappled in sunlight. “Send me images of this book in the most beautiful settings,” he beseeched the masses, “I will share them with my many followers”. But the man had picked up many naysayers along his journey. These were people to whom a badly written book was anathema, and this man’s, they roundly declared, were among the worst. And so at his call, they flocked out of the woodwork. Some shared images of his book being weighed by the friendly neighbourhood raddiwalla. Others showed the book burning up in a great bonfire while wild, joyful dances were performed around its ashes. Still others positioned the cover of the book — the one about the one Indian woman — just so, on a roll of toilet paper. They laughed long and loud and several others joined in. (The narrator shamefully admits to doing the same.)
.@chetan_bhagat Take a look sir, your book in the most beautiful backdrop. Please RT. pic.twitter.com/ZiXSuFs1tm
— Rofl Gandhi 2.0 🏹 Commentary (@RoflGandhi_) October 10, 2016
.@chetan_bhagat No backdrop can be more beautiful for your book than this sir. pic.twitter.com/PgGNclrYGP
— IAS Smoking Skills (@Smokingskills07) October 10, 2016
हमें #OneIndianGirl चाहिये pic.twitter.com/T93AqmJvsp
— Elvis priceless (@elvis_pricless) October 10, 2016
As for the man, he knew that he couldn’t win against their laughter. So he pretended that he too enjoyed the joke, and displayed his wit with a flippant quip. (When really he was sad and broken up inside.)
Nice. A little better photoshop needed but good effort :). Happy to be in every corner of my great country. https://t.co/p4cJrLxd5f
— Chetan Bhagat (@chetan_bhagat) October 10, 2016
And they all lived happily ever after. Well, for a while at least. A few months later, the man wrote his next book. And all who had laughed at him, knew the joke was really on them.
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