CHETAN BHAGATS HALF GIRLFRIEND

AND
THE ARCHETYPE OF QUEST
Dr SULTAN ALI AHMED
Assistant Professor, Dept of English
B H College, Howly

Chetan Bhagat, the most popular Indian writer in English, especially among the young
generation, has come up with yet another best selling fiction, Half Girlfriend. Apparently, the
title of the novel may look somewhat frivolous and it may indicate that a casual relationship may
be the theme of the novel. However, the first impression created by this misleading title of the
novel gradually gets subverted with the progress of the plot, and, what finally emerges is a
wonderful and gripping narrative celebrating the eternal romantic love between man and woman
that transgresses every possible obstacle. At the backdrop of changing social and moral values,
when romantic love is fast disappearing from human life making room for casual relationships,
this latest novel from Bhagat seems to dramatize the clash between two sets of values in the
guise of a love narrative.
The two central characters of the novel are drawn from two different worlds. Riya Somani
belongs to the corporate world of Delhi, where the capital city of India is the metaphor for
development and modernity, while Madhav Jha represents the feudal milieu of Bihar, where
Bihar is synonymous with backwardness. The social classes that they represent are distinctly
different from each other. Similarly, each social class patronizes certain social values which, at
times, clash with each other. Therefore, the story between Riya and Madhav is not a simple love
story between a boy and a girl, it rather focuses and exposes the multiple complexities of the
Indian society such as the class conflict, the social divide, the caste equation, and, above all, the
differences in social values.
Madhav Jha is a prince of an erstwhile princely state in Bihar. He knows it very well that, in a
democratic country like India, these princely titles are nothing more than useless ornaments. But
this princely background of Madhav assumes significance in the novel as it presents himself with
two contrasting pictures of India. In his own village he is still deeply revered by the ordinary
villagers as their own prince; but, this same prince is a total non-entity in the corporate world of
Delhi. When Madhav meets the parents and friends of Riya in a party of upper-rich people, he
can hardly make any impression on them. Despite all his efforts to make him presentable and
respectable, he remains to them essentially a Bihari boy till the end. On the other hand, Riya is
the only daughter of a rich businessman of Delhi. Although she does not feel at home with the
social values of the corporate world, but, at the initial stage of the novel she is not strong enough

to come out of it. Hence, her friendship with Madhav, the Bihari prince, begins as a kind of half
friendship. They get admissions to St. Stephens College, Delhi, by virtue of sports quota. Both
play basket ball, Madhav is better at it being a state level player. This game is instrumental in
forming friendship between them. At one point Riya wants to see him as nothing more than a
basket ball friend. Besides, by nature, she is a very reserved girl unwilling to share personal
details with others, even with close friends. On the other hand, Madhav wants to talk to her more
and more despite some vital differences between them. Riya, being a student of English literature
and with schooling in English medium, can speak English with a better fluency and accent that is
matching with the English environment of St Stephens College. But Madhavs English is purely
Bihari English which makes him feel inferior in the posh milieu of this elite college. However,
his better skills in basket ball bring Riya closer to him and eventually he falls in love with her.
He is determined to develop a relationship with her despite her lukewarm response. When the
two openly talk about their relationship she always insists that she can not commit anything more
than friendship which frustrates Madhav and makes him despondent and desperate. He is incited
by his male friends to make advances towards physical relationship with Riya. But her concept
of life and relationship is different and she snaps all her ties with him when a forceful and
unsuccessful attempt of physical relationship is made on her by Madhav at the instigation of his
male friends. She takes herself totally away from Madhavs life, drops out of her course of study
in the middle and abruptly gets married with an NRI businessman settled in London, as per the
wish and deep desire of her parents. This sudden and unexpected turn of events leaves a long
standing effect on Madhav who can hardly come to terms with this bitter reality. Somehow he
completes the course and looks for a good job. But he realizes one thing very clearly that he can
never adjust himself in Delhi or elsewhere. So he decides to go back to Bihar, his native place of
Dumrao, to help her mother who is almost singlehandedly running an unaided not-for-profit
private school for seven hundred rural children. Thus he does not take up the lucrative job of an
MNC offered to him and comes back to his native state to assist his widowed mother. This
shifting of the scene from Delhi to Bihar also presents a contrasting picture of modernity and
feudalism, development and backwardness. Madhav makes an all out effort to improve the
facilities of the school by fighting against all odds but can hardly earn any success due to various
social and political factors. Eventually, it comes to his knowledge that Bill Gates, the richest man
in the world, would pay a visit to the backward state of Bihar, particularly the schools, and would
offer handsome donations in case the need could be justified with impressive speech in front of
Bill Gates himself. Madhav decides to avail this opportunity and, utilizing his influence as a
local prince, he persuades the government officials to put the name of their school in the visiting
list of Bill Gates. However he feels that his knowledge and accent of English is not appropriate
enough for an impactful speech in front of an American gentleman like Mr. Gates. So he decides
to join a spoken English coaching centre in Patna.
There is enough drama in this novel, and, coincidence plays a significant role in the development
of the plot. When Madhav is in Patna, quite accidentally, he meets Riya again, the lady who
should be in London now. Their previous friendship is renewed cautiously on the acceptance by

Madhav that he would not insist on Riya to divulge anything of her married life. Thus he remains
in the dark about what had happened to Riyas married life. Madhav shows the due honour to her
right to privacy. When she visits Madhavs home and meets his mother she can feel the
reservations of his mother towards her. His mothers main objection is that she is a divorcee and
belongs to Marowary community. In Madhavs absence, Madhavs mother asks Riya to go away
from the life of his son. Meanwhile, Riya helped Madhav in the preparation of his English
speech with her advanced knowledge of the subject and subsequently the school wins a
substantial grant from Bill Gates Foundation thanks to the wonderful speech made by Madhav
which was even admired by Bill Gates himself. Madhav is jubilant with the achievement but his
happiness is marred by the sudden disappearance of Riya. She leaves the village without taking
leave from Madhav and others. She departs unnoticingly leaving a letter for him which informs
that she is afflicted by lung cancer and her death is imminent. Madhav traces her everywhere but
she is not to be found. He assumes that she is dead and her death is too shocking for him to bear.
For the next two years he passes through a very painful traumatic phase of his life. Then some
journals kept by her were recovered from her apartment that she hired at Patna. These journals
came to the hands of Madhav, but he can not read them due to the deep emotion and tragic love
involved with writer of those journals. They are too delicate and too sensitive things for him. At
this point of the story, Madhav comes to meet the author Chetan Bhagat when the latter is in
Patna for a programme. It is learnt from the reading of the journals that Riya is probably alive.
The last few pages of the novel are about how Madhav succeeds in finding out Riya, finally, in
New York, after encountering immense hardship, difficulty, frustration and exhaustion of
patience. The novel puts in record the saga of this great quest, the quest that may not end. At one
point of time, it appears like the chasing of an impossible dream. It is merely an accident or
coincident that the quest is successful here. But the hero of the novel is presented as somebody
who is not willing to quit from this quest under any circumstances. He is ready to fight to the
finish for the things that he values, the things that mean everything to him. Riya means
everything to Madhav, but the search for Riya is not merely the search for a girl one loves, but
this search is an allegorical quest for all those noble ideals of life which have been nourishing the
human life since the beginning of the civilization. There is an archetypal dimension in this long
and arduous quest for Riya and, hence, this archetypal quest arouses the primitive and ancient
self in the readers who find in Madhav a prototype of every human being.
Riya belongs to the corporate world but she does not accept the corporate values and corporate
culture, because, under the pressure of this corporate culture, the genuine human feelings often
get trampled and smashed. In this corporate world, wealth and property are important, but real
human relationships dont matter at all. She breaks her marriage protesting against this
mechanical way of life. Therefore, she is a rebel against the corporate values nourished by the
corporate culture. On the other hand, Madhav belongs to the feudal world but he does not accept
the feudal values and feudal culture in its entirety like his mother. Very unwillingly he assumes
the role of the prince just to honour the wish of his mother. When he is in Delhi he makes an

attempt to imitate the corporate culture of Delhi as he wants to develop a relationship with
Riya. But very soon he realizes that he can never fit himself into those kinds of things. So, the
very best in him comes out when he is closer to the roots, when he is on his home turf, when he
is very earthy and very natural. In his personality, there is a healthy combination of tradition and
modernitythe best of the rural India is combined with the best of the global world. The human
values that he fosters and projects are also a mix from the tradition and modernity- the kind of
fusion that Rabindranath Tagore had always dreamt of in his life and also had put into practice.
Thus, the quest for Riya assumes a metaphoric proportion in this fiction. In the Introduction to
the novel, the author Chetan Bhagat announces that his purpose in writing fiction now is to
change the mindset of the Indian people. This can be done by projecting certain social and moral
values and, it seems that an excellent attempt towards that goal has been made in this highly
readable and engrossing fiction.