BENGALURU: ON day one of Bangalore Literature Festival, the session between India’s best-selling author Chetan Bhagat and writer-social worker Sudha Murty was jam-packed. People were buoyed by the prospect of seeing Bhagat getting grilled by Murty.
The topic was ‘Having it all: The New Indian Girl,’ with reference to Bhagat’s latest book ‘One Indian Girl.’ Murty’s husband and Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy was among the audience.
Murty was firing on all cylinder right from the start. She told Bhagat how she was uncomfortable reading those sections of his book which detailed intimate moments between the protagonist Radhika and a man. She asked him the reason for the explicit depiction. To this Bhagat said this book was his one chance to write about women. “I don’t want people in small towns to know about sex from Google,” he added.
Bhagat added that though sex exists in society, talking about it is taboo. They also spoke about how the former became a writer, the reflections of his troubled relationship with his father he depicts in his books, and feminism.