Chetan Bhagat comes across as the kind of guy you wouldn't mind hanging out with. He seems easy-going, responds to questions in a down-to-earth manner, and isn't afraid of being honest when it comes to analysing his own worth as a writer.

Interestingly, it wasn't his writing that drew Senior Features Editor Lindsay Pereira to him. It was the reaction to the writing.

What Bhagat had managed, within two short years, was to top the Indian bestseller list for fiction. Twice. There was Five Point Someone in May 2004, followed by One Night @ the Call Center in 2005. To say that both did extremely well would be an understatement. Readers clearly loved the novels. What grabbed Lindsay was the way critics dealt with that success. They all agreed Bhagat could hold a story, but there were all kinds of questions raised regarding the literary and non-literary aspects, theories about why such seemingly simplistic works had touched some chord, and how the Chetan Bhagat phenomenon had come into being in the first place.

Through it all, the author calmly went about his business as an investment banker in Hong Kong, appearing only to do a few interviews and, it would appear, collect his rather hefty earnings from book sales.

As Lindsay points out, Bhagat's writing is all about offering inside views, via plots intricately tied to the novels' settings. The stories move quickly, the dialogue never stepping out of the colloquial. His debut, Five Point Someone, was about three friends unable to cope with their lives at an Indian Institute of Technology. As for One Night @ the Call Center, it is rather self-explanatory. Both novels have smaller tales strewn liberally about, which, Lindsay imagines, contributes towards making them such quick, easy reads.

Bhagat's first novel won him a Society Young Achiever's award in 2004 and a Publisher's Recognition Award in 2005. His latest has also begun life well, continuing to sell even as you read this. When speaking of the genre it ought to be slotted into, the author says it is "in the humour category, with dark undertones. Like the previous book, this one has a fast-paced, thriller feel to it." Apparently, research for One Night� involved a network of call centre agents. There were stealth visits to call centres at night, and Bhagat was supposedly "whisked in and hidden behind desks" in his attempt to understand that life as much as possible. This excerpt should give you an idea.

If Bhagat were to ever attempt an autobiography, Lindsay suspects it would read much like his novels, considering the interesting twists and turns his life has taken since a childhood spent in Delhi. After attending Army Public School, he graduated from IIT Delhi in 1995. An MBA from IIM Ahmedabad came next, followed by a job with an American investment bank, which he continues to hold.

Bhagat is married, with year-old twin boys. He likes yoga, once wanted to be a chef, is extremely fond of Govinda films and, according to a note on his web site, loves making friends. Armed with all that information, Lindsay decided to ask Bhagat about his writing. About what his idea of a good novel was, for instance, and what he would do if he were to spawn a generation of copycats in India.

The result, in Bhagat's words: "My most candid interview ever."

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