Snotty girls and HMT boys: What Chetan Bhagat gets wrong about relationships

Why is it that every time Chetan Bhagat makes a statement about women, he seems to put his foot in his mouth? In 2013 he made a joke about the rupee being raped that landed him in hot water. In 2012 he told the nation that “the phulka-making bride may come at a cost of missing out on other qualities”. Ironically Bhagat was trying to advocate for women’s progress. He wrote “Don’t just tolerate, but accept and even celebrate our successful women. They take our homes ahead and our country forward. We may have less hot phulkas, but we will have a better nation”. But he made it sound as if holding down a career and a rational thought in one’s head could not go hand in hand with making phulkas. In 2014 it is this same successful, educated woman who has today found disfavour with Bhagat. A couple of days back, Bhagat was speaking at IIT Delhi’s annual fest, Rendezvous. There, along with his other missives and suggestions to students, he also made the following statement. Speaking about his new novel, The Half-Girlfriend, he said, “Educated girls don’t want to date a guy who doesn’t speak English and this is what I have tried to bring out in my novel”. [caption id=“attachment_1765067” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Chetan Bhagat. AFP.[/caption] Yes I know, it is a very direct plug for his book which is about a Bihari boy called Madhav who falls in love with a girl called Riya. Madhav doesn’t speak English well, Riya doesn’t return his affections. He keeps pursuing her – read stalking her – till she agrees to be his half-girlfriend. Which sounds dangerously like the stalker-theme of Sonam Kapoor-Dhanush starrer Raanjhanaa. But it’s about more than just plugging a book. Bhagat concluded his speech by saying “I want to change people’s thinking by writing, so that they can elect better. I use my writings, novels and columns to focus on that aspect and hope my message reaches out to a large audience”. That this is the message he wants to send out to the large audience that was listening to him and the others like me who will be reading about his speech, is worrying to say the least. For one, it’s not just educated girls who don’t want to date someone who can’t speak English. Men are no less picky. Call it elitism or whatever you will, but this is a larger practice adopted by Indian society at large. Look at any marriage website or the newspaper matrimonials. These are arranged marriages, usually fixed by people’s parents. In the ads looking for brides for “educated men” like doctors/ MBAs/ IIT graduates, it is often very clearly stated that the bride needs to be English-speaking. _Bahu susheel ho aur phulka-_expert ho sakti hai, par iske saath saath angrezi bolna zaroori hai. If the husband is English-speaking his parents want him to have a wife who is fluent in English as well. If the husband is an MBA, the bride should at least be a graduate because even if these same non-successful phulka-making women may not be expected to earn a living, they’re certainly expected to attend office parties with their husbands and conduct a conversation with the husband’s bosses and colleagues. English toh banta hai. There are few educated English-speaking men who would be dating a Hindi Medium Type (as they call it in Delhi). Also being an educated “woman” has little to do with my choosing a partner who speaks English. That has everything to do with what language I am comfortable communicating in. In today’s age of cosmopolitan marriages, cutting across communities, English is often our first language. It’s what we think in. I may speak Bengali well and my partner may speak Tamil well and we may both speak passable Hindi, but to have an intelligent and coherent conversation English will be our default choice. It’s not something to be proud of, but that’s the way it is. To me, since I don’t believe I’m starring in Raja Hindustani where the heroine was from Oxford University and fell in love with the taxi driver, it is very important to be able to communicate with the person I’m dating. Of all people Bhagat, who is a management guru and Yoda rolled into one, should know that “communication is key”. The bottomline is that it cuts both ways. To say only “educated” women want partners who speak English is a very superficial and sweeping statement. To lump a practice which can be seen across Indian middle-class society on the shoulders of women is a juvenile and ill-informed. Yes, we must push our book and give it publicity, but not like this. To tell a bunch of impressionable men that they’ve been rejected by some woman they’re pining after simply because their English isn’t up the mark, is encouraging delusions and creating a very skewed image of the “educated woman”. It’s bad enough that many Indian men can’t seem to understand the word “no”, without feeding them this nonsense too. Chetan Bhagat should think about that as I head off to cook some phulkas while practising elocution in the Queen’s English.