Chetan Bhagat's three Mistakes

Chetan Bhagat gets his plot for The Three Mistakes of my Life from an e mail he receives from an Ahmedabad businessman who is trying to commit suicide even as he is typing out his suicide note to the author. This is the author’s third novel and like his previous novels stays close to E M Forster’s basic prescription for a novel : “ Yes-Oh dear yes-the novel tells a story.” The story told by The three Mistakes is a first person narration by Govind, the sender of the e mail that brought the author from Singapore to Ahmedabad to find out the reason for his attempted suicide.

The novel is a record of events that occurred in little over two years as math tutor Govind and his two friends, the local pol cricketer Ish and Omi ,the son of the temple priest go about setting their business. There are three historical strands around which the story is woven: emerging of Indian cricket in the 21st century, the Gujarat earthquake of 2001 and the post Godhra riots of 2002. While the storyline develops in a manner that would keep the reader riveted, the treatment of what is the central point of the narrative is shallow and simplistic.

The Gujarat riot is used as the finale. The novel has a character Bittu Mama, Omi’s uncle who is trying to find his feet as an up and coming politician of the ruling party in Gujarat. There is Parekhji, the Mercedes using patron of the socio cultural initiative to address the Hindu angst and the Kar seva in Ayodhya and the returning sewaks are central to the narrative. Still the characters at the centre of it all are too detached to notice what they are getting into. And when they are faced with making a choice the main reason is that the boy will play cricket for the country.

It is therefore to cricket that we must pay a closer attention as the book presents it as an alternative religion as it were. Unlike academic writings on cricket, this book deals with it through a sub plot of an avid cricket fan who once played for his municipal school and is a local hero amongst the children and has discovered a gifted child Ali who can hit sixes at will. To build upon this, the narrative takes us through several matches quite closely. However it is quite evident that not only Govind but also Chetan Bhagat is not quite a cricket buff. While Govind has a business built around the sport, Bhagat builds a novel around it .But both of them get the facts of the Eden Gardens Test match horribly mixed up. Harbhajan’s hat trick was in the first innings and not the second and apparently Bhagat has not heard of S S Das who opened with Ramesh. Editing and research could have been better.

The book ends like other of Bhagat’s books with a contrived happy ending and there is a love story thrown in for good measure. Both cricket and communal riot get only a superficial treatment in the book. Where Bhagat excels is in portrayal of the lower middle class Ahmedabad “Pol” which comes alive in the pages of the book. This for Bhagat, the writer is forward movement as both the IIT and the call centre were mere back drops in his previous novels. Here the pol is a real community going about its routine humdrum existence while at the same time having numerous plots and sub plots building up.

The three mistakes by the author then are his not following cricket,simplyfying communal strife and not building on the alternate cultural force in a convincing manner as at the end even govind wasn't convinced.