Catcher in the rice

CHETAN BHAGAT RETURNED to his Mid-Levels flat last week hoping to forget about the press pack he'd just faced in India over the Bollywood film deal for his controversial hit novel.

Since its release last month, Five Point Someone - about the pressures heaped on students - has made Bhagat a celebrity, roiling India with questions about its education system, suicide, drugs and pre-marital teen sex.

His only window in Hong Kong to that fame is his laptop and a fattening folder of press clippings. Neither gets much of a look, though. Bhagat, 30, works long hours as a credit analyst for a US bank, and his wife, Anusha, is expecting twins next month.

Through a website designed in Hong Kong, Bhagat answers more than 10 e-mails a day from teenage readers. English-language novels by Indians are considered best-sellers after 2,000 copies. Bhagat has topped 10,000, taking him to No2 in the best-seller list. The real sales rush is expected when summer eases enough to allow Indians to shop, and students - the book's main target - return to campus and spread the word.

'This is 15 minutes of fame,' Bhagat says. 'It's very enchanting and it's hard to focus on anything else. But it's not a final obsession. I have a lot of other things going on. In that sense, the timing was perfect.'

After slipping out of the office for lunch at home, the yoga buff sits in the lotus position at his dinner table. He wears his banker's garb of a blue business shirt with white collar and a navy suit. Tie and shoes are tossed near his luggage - which, he jokes, is packed with the T-shirts and jeans he sports as the hip voice of India's youth. When Anusha, who is also a banker, laughs at the thought of her husband as the arbiter of cool, Bhagat admits the novel draws on his familiarity with life as an overweight, bookish kid who lacked the time and nerve to talk to girls.