Open Letter to Chetan Bhagat

Hi Chetan

I don't write book reviews but you are special as One night at the Call Center was the first book that I finished in one day. Before that I always thought books were supposed to be read over a complete year.

I am going to compare The 3 Mistakes of My Life with the earlier books of yours (Five Point Someone and One Night at the Call Center) on three parameters.

Comic Sense: Chetan I like you for your style of writing, the way you make those sarcastic comments on everything in life. 3MOML is nothing in comparison to FPS or ONACC, I still use dialogs of Bakshi at my workplace (believe me) or FPS's while with my classmates. 3MOML has no such lines and for the first half of the book I hardly found anything amusing, while last two books were hilarious especially the first half.

Understanding of Girls: Chetan I feel you did not express relationship with girls properly in the first two books. I mean somehow all the stories with girls seemed superficial to read. In 3MOML you have expressed it really well. Not only it feels far more real also, you are at your funny best when writing about the relationship with a girl.

Climax of the story: In ONACC the climax was too much over the top and FPS ends just like that. 3MOML you have penned the best climax according to your own standards. The story is stronger than the other two and you have complemented it really well with a fine ending.

Overall it seems you have worked on your weak areas but you have compromised a lot on your style of writing. This book is not Chetan Bhagat funny and that is a big let down. Somehow I feel that you are more interested in writing movie stories than books. You wrote FPS just as a book and that's why it is your best work till date. In ONACC you were clearly writing a movie story and went too much overboard, still the book was really funny. In 3MOML you are clearly worried about writing a better movie story and you succeed at that but, somewhere I missed my favourite writer.

Tarun Chandel
A fan of your funny style of writing!