DEEP INSIDE THE Deutsche Bank (DB) offices in Kodak House, in a small division called Distressed Assets, sits a best-selling author who no one knows about. When I ask the bank’s recently appointed head of corporate communications, he is genuinely surprised. “Really? Chetan Bhagat works with us in Mumbai? I’ve read all his books, but I didn’t know that.” Next I ask the bank’s HR head, who’s been around many years, but he says: “Chetan Bhagat? I don’t know. We have 7,000 employees, so it’s not always possible to keep track.” I turn to DB’s CEO as a last resort and at last, he confirms the existence of the mysterious Mr Bhagat. “You’d like to meet him?” Gunit Chadha asks with a wry smile. DB recruited Chetan Bhagat for its Singapore office in 2004, the year his first book Five Point Someone was released and he was still unknown. And when he moved to the Mumbai office as the head of the newly created Distressed Assets Division last year, the transfer was executed with zero fanfare — so it’s not entirely surprising that few of his colleagues know of the celebrity in their midst. When I finally meet him at his apartment across from the Mantralaya on a Saturday afternoon, Bhagat — sitting at the dining table, shorn of all mystery after a photo shoot in his kid’s playpen — grins when he hears of my travails in finding him. “I deliberately keep a very low profile in DB,” he says. “I try to keep my banking and writing careers separate, but these days, I have clients who say they want my autograph before they sign the deal.” Bhagat is no longer the unknown author he was when he joined DB. He’s Indian publishing’s rockstar, a rage among the younger set, easily out-selling every other Indian author today. Five Point Someone has sold eight lakh copies while One Night At The Call Centre has sold seven lakh. His third release, The Three Mistakes Of My Life — a story set in Ahmedabad in the time between the Gujarat earthquake and the Godhra riots — is the biggest hit of them all, selling five lakh copies in three months. This time, even the critics are going easy on him. “I usually get horrible reviews, so by my standards, it’s been quite good,” says Bhagat. “My books require you to get involved at an emotional level. The Three Mistakes... has made a connection with small towns where people fall in love during tuitions rather than at discos and the romance is carried on through SMS.” There’s also the sex scene where the hero and heroine lose their virginity — a constant in every Chetan Bhagat book. Currently a popular speaker on the campus circuit, the 34 year-old author gets a lot of questions on this from his fans. “They ask me why I always have this love-making scene and I tell them it’s because you can’t have a romance without it. But it’s never graphic — I actually rush through that part,” he says. The Three Mistakes might very well be Bhagat’s last book, for he’s now found a new career — script-writing for Bollywood. After writing a script based on his own book, One Night At A Call Centre, the author is now working on an original script for Shree Ashtavinayak Cine Vision, of Jab We Met and Golmaal fame. In fact, it’s now come to a point where his writing and banking careers are at par. “I earn as much from my writing as I do from DB. Especially this year, when it’s been bad for bankers,” he says happily. Like most foreign-bankers, Bhagat puts in 12 hours in the office — starting at 8 am and leaving at 8 pm — and his day mostly consists of analysing the financial reports of loss-making companies and bad loan portfolios of other banks that DB may eventually acquire. How does he manage to run two such opposite careers in parallel? “Writing is a flexible career, you can do it anywhere,” he says. “I write in trains, planes, cars. When I’m in the middle of it, I sometimes take a break to write full time.” Bhagat wrote his first book while goofing off in the offices of Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong. A graduate of IIT-Delhi and IIM-Ahmedabad, his first job through campus placements was with Peregrine in Hong Kong, a job he lost in six months when the company closed its operations. In his next job, with Goldman Sachs, he was saddled with a bad boss, who was later to be the model for the villain in One Night At The Call Centre. “I was in bad shape,” recalls Bhagat. “There were no other jobs available so I stayed. But to get my revenge on my boss I spent most of my time in office writing Five Point Someone.” It took Bhagat two years to find a publisher willing to take the book. Rupa & Co, a niche publishing firm based in the old Daryagunj area of Delhi, finally accepted the manuscript, with conditions. “They asked me to re-work it. Even then, they probably didn’t imagine it would as well as it did,” says Bhagat. Five Point Someone was a blockbuster by Indian standards and with the global economy looking up after the dotcom meltdown, Bhagat quit Goldman Sachs to join DB in Singapore, where he finished his second book. Three years later, he applied for a transfer to Mumbai when his wife Anusha, a classmate from IIM-A, decided to take up a job offer as COO of UBS in India. Living in Mumbai has certainly opened doors for Bhagat. He’s unabashedly enthusiastic about Bollywood, though his banking job doesn’t always allow him to hang out with the filmi set as much as he’d like too. “Their parties are in the suburbs and start at 11 pm, so I can’t make it,” he says. Still, Bhagat has bought himself a railway pass to get him to Film City, Goregaon, where he often goes to meet his producers. “I want to do only excellent work for Bollywood,” he declares. “My greatest inspiration is Gulzar, an author who’s done film scripts a well.” For those who might want to follow in his footsteps and launch into dual careers, Bhagat’s advice is, “You can’t be a perfectionist. My books have flaws. I won’t get an A-plus as a writer or as a husband and father. And I’m not going to get an A-plus as a banker and become CEO of DB. But people with the highest grades don’t have the happiest lives.”
Saturday, August 23, 2008
CHETAN BHAGAT IS MAKING MORE MONEY FROM BOLLYWOOD THAN FROM HIS REGULAR JOB AT DEUTSCHE BANK
INDIAN PUBLISHING’S ROCK STAR CHETAN BHAGAT HAS SWITCHED FROM WRITING NOVELS TO SCRIPTING MOVIES. AND HE’S ACTUALLY MAKING MORE MONEY FROM BOLLYWOOD THAN FROM HIS REGULAR JOB AT DEUTSCHE BANK
DEEP INSIDE THE Deutsche Bank (DB) offices in Kodak House, in a small division called Distressed Assets, sits a best-selling author who no one knows about. When I ask the bank’s recently appointed head of corporate communications, he is genuinely surprised. “Really? Chetan Bhagat works with us in Mumbai? I’ve read all his books, but I didn’t know that.” Next I ask the bank’s HR head, who’s been around many years, but he says: “Chetan Bhagat? I don’t know. We have 7,000 employees, so it’s not always possible to keep track.” I turn to DB’s CEO as a last resort and at last, he confirms the existence of the mysterious Mr Bhagat. “You’d like to meet him?” Gunit Chadha asks with a wry smile. DB recruited Chetan Bhagat for its Singapore office in 2004, the year his first book Five Point Someone was released and he was still unknown. And when he moved to the Mumbai office as the head of the newly created Distressed Assets Division last year, the transfer was executed with zero fanfare — so it’s not entirely surprising that few of his colleagues know of the celebrity in their midst. When I finally meet him at his apartment across from the Mantralaya on a Saturday afternoon, Bhagat — sitting at the dining table, shorn of all mystery after a photo shoot in his kid’s playpen — grins when he hears of my travails in finding him. “I deliberately keep a very low profile in DB,” he says. “I try to keep my banking and writing careers separate, but these days, I have clients who say they want my autograph before they sign the deal.” Bhagat is no longer the unknown author he was when he joined DB. He’s Indian publishing’s rockstar, a rage among the younger set, easily out-selling every other Indian author today. Five Point Someone has sold eight lakh copies while One Night At The Call Centre has sold seven lakh. His third release, The Three Mistakes Of My Life — a story set in Ahmedabad in the time between the Gujarat earthquake and the Godhra riots — is the biggest hit of them all, selling five lakh copies in three months. This time, even the critics are going easy on him. “I usually get horrible reviews, so by my standards, it’s been quite good,” says Bhagat. “My books require you to get involved at an emotional level. The Three Mistakes... has made a connection with small towns where people fall in love during tuitions rather than at discos and the romance is carried on through SMS.” There’s also the sex scene where the hero and heroine lose their virginity — a constant in every Chetan Bhagat book. Currently a popular speaker on the campus circuit, the 34 year-old author gets a lot of questions on this from his fans. “They ask me why I always have this love-making scene and I tell them it’s because you can’t have a romance without it. But it’s never graphic — I actually rush through that part,” he says. The Three Mistakes might very well be Bhagat’s last book, for he’s now found a new career — script-writing for Bollywood. After writing a script based on his own book, One Night At A Call Centre, the author is now working on an original script for Shree Ashtavinayak Cine Vision, of Jab We Met and Golmaal fame. In fact, it’s now come to a point where his writing and banking careers are at par. “I earn as much from my writing as I do from DB. Especially this year, when it’s been bad for bankers,” he says happily. Like most foreign-bankers, Bhagat puts in 12 hours in the office — starting at 8 am and leaving at 8 pm — and his day mostly consists of analysing the financial reports of loss-making companies and bad loan portfolios of other banks that DB may eventually acquire. How does he manage to run two such opposite careers in parallel? “Writing is a flexible career, you can do it anywhere,” he says. “I write in trains, planes, cars. When I’m in the middle of it, I sometimes take a break to write full time.” Bhagat wrote his first book while goofing off in the offices of Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong. A graduate of IIT-Delhi and IIM-Ahmedabad, his first job through campus placements was with Peregrine in Hong Kong, a job he lost in six months when the company closed its operations. In his next job, with Goldman Sachs, he was saddled with a bad boss, who was later to be the model for the villain in One Night At The Call Centre. “I was in bad shape,” recalls Bhagat. “There were no other jobs available so I stayed. But to get my revenge on my boss I spent most of my time in office writing Five Point Someone.” It took Bhagat two years to find a publisher willing to take the book. Rupa & Co, a niche publishing firm based in the old Daryagunj area of Delhi, finally accepted the manuscript, with conditions. “They asked me to re-work it. Even then, they probably didn’t imagine it would as well as it did,” says Bhagat. Five Point Someone was a blockbuster by Indian standards and with the global economy looking up after the dotcom meltdown, Bhagat quit Goldman Sachs to join DB in Singapore, where he finished his second book. Three years later, he applied for a transfer to Mumbai when his wife Anusha, a classmate from IIM-A, decided to take up a job offer as COO of UBS in India. Living in Mumbai has certainly opened doors for Bhagat. He’s unabashedly enthusiastic about Bollywood, though his banking job doesn’t always allow him to hang out with the filmi set as much as he’d like too. “Their parties are in the suburbs and start at 11 pm, so I can’t make it,” he says. Still, Bhagat has bought himself a railway pass to get him to Film City, Goregaon, where he often goes to meet his producers. “I want to do only excellent work for Bollywood,” he declares. “My greatest inspiration is Gulzar, an author who’s done film scripts a well.” For those who might want to follow in his footsteps and launch into dual careers, Bhagat’s advice is, “You can’t be a perfectionist. My books have flaws. I won’t get an A-plus as a writer or as a husband and father. And I’m not going to get an A-plus as a banker and become CEO of DB. But people with the highest grades don’t have the happiest lives.”
DEEP INSIDE THE Deutsche Bank (DB) offices in Kodak House, in a small division called Distressed Assets, sits a best-selling author who no one knows about. When I ask the bank’s recently appointed head of corporate communications, he is genuinely surprised. “Really? Chetan Bhagat works with us in Mumbai? I’ve read all his books, but I didn’t know that.” Next I ask the bank’s HR head, who’s been around many years, but he says: “Chetan Bhagat? I don’t know. We have 7,000 employees, so it’s not always possible to keep track.” I turn to DB’s CEO as a last resort and at last, he confirms the existence of the mysterious Mr Bhagat. “You’d like to meet him?” Gunit Chadha asks with a wry smile. DB recruited Chetan Bhagat for its Singapore office in 2004, the year his first book Five Point Someone was released and he was still unknown. And when he moved to the Mumbai office as the head of the newly created Distressed Assets Division last year, the transfer was executed with zero fanfare — so it’s not entirely surprising that few of his colleagues know of the celebrity in their midst. When I finally meet him at his apartment across from the Mantralaya on a Saturday afternoon, Bhagat — sitting at the dining table, shorn of all mystery after a photo shoot in his kid’s playpen — grins when he hears of my travails in finding him. “I deliberately keep a very low profile in DB,” he says. “I try to keep my banking and writing careers separate, but these days, I have clients who say they want my autograph before they sign the deal.” Bhagat is no longer the unknown author he was when he joined DB. He’s Indian publishing’s rockstar, a rage among the younger set, easily out-selling every other Indian author today. Five Point Someone has sold eight lakh copies while One Night At The Call Centre has sold seven lakh. His third release, The Three Mistakes Of My Life — a story set in Ahmedabad in the time between the Gujarat earthquake and the Godhra riots — is the biggest hit of them all, selling five lakh copies in three months. This time, even the critics are going easy on him. “I usually get horrible reviews, so by my standards, it’s been quite good,” says Bhagat. “My books require you to get involved at an emotional level. The Three Mistakes... has made a connection with small towns where people fall in love during tuitions rather than at discos and the romance is carried on through SMS.” There’s also the sex scene where the hero and heroine lose their virginity — a constant in every Chetan Bhagat book. Currently a popular speaker on the campus circuit, the 34 year-old author gets a lot of questions on this from his fans. “They ask me why I always have this love-making scene and I tell them it’s because you can’t have a romance without it. But it’s never graphic — I actually rush through that part,” he says. The Three Mistakes might very well be Bhagat’s last book, for he’s now found a new career — script-writing for Bollywood. After writing a script based on his own book, One Night At A Call Centre, the author is now working on an original script for Shree Ashtavinayak Cine Vision, of Jab We Met and Golmaal fame. In fact, it’s now come to a point where his writing and banking careers are at par. “I earn as much from my writing as I do from DB. Especially this year, when it’s been bad for bankers,” he says happily. Like most foreign-bankers, Bhagat puts in 12 hours in the office — starting at 8 am and leaving at 8 pm — and his day mostly consists of analysing the financial reports of loss-making companies and bad loan portfolios of other banks that DB may eventually acquire. How does he manage to run two such opposite careers in parallel? “Writing is a flexible career, you can do it anywhere,” he says. “I write in trains, planes, cars. When I’m in the middle of it, I sometimes take a break to write full time.” Bhagat wrote his first book while goofing off in the offices of Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong. A graduate of IIT-Delhi and IIM-Ahmedabad, his first job through campus placements was with Peregrine in Hong Kong, a job he lost in six months when the company closed its operations. In his next job, with Goldman Sachs, he was saddled with a bad boss, who was later to be the model for the villain in One Night At The Call Centre. “I was in bad shape,” recalls Bhagat. “There were no other jobs available so I stayed. But to get my revenge on my boss I spent most of my time in office writing Five Point Someone.” It took Bhagat two years to find a publisher willing to take the book. Rupa & Co, a niche publishing firm based in the old Daryagunj area of Delhi, finally accepted the manuscript, with conditions. “They asked me to re-work it. Even then, they probably didn’t imagine it would as well as it did,” says Bhagat. Five Point Someone was a blockbuster by Indian standards and with the global economy looking up after the dotcom meltdown, Bhagat quit Goldman Sachs to join DB in Singapore, where he finished his second book. Three years later, he applied for a transfer to Mumbai when his wife Anusha, a classmate from IIM-A, decided to take up a job offer as COO of UBS in India. Living in Mumbai has certainly opened doors for Bhagat. He’s unabashedly enthusiastic about Bollywood, though his banking job doesn’t always allow him to hang out with the filmi set as much as he’d like too. “Their parties are in the suburbs and start at 11 pm, so I can’t make it,” he says. Still, Bhagat has bought himself a railway pass to get him to Film City, Goregaon, where he often goes to meet his producers. “I want to do only excellent work for Bollywood,” he declares. “My greatest inspiration is Gulzar, an author who’s done film scripts a well.” For those who might want to follow in his footsteps and launch into dual careers, Bhagat’s advice is, “You can’t be a perfectionist. My books have flaws. I won’t get an A-plus as a writer or as a husband and father. And I’m not going to get an A-plus as a banker and become CEO of DB. But people with the highest grades don’t have the happiest lives.”
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Nice article! Thank you!
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