Like several celebrities from Mumbai, one of India's most popular authors, screenwriter and former banker, Chetan Bhagat has quietly moved base to Dubai. And it is not in the recent past, but for the last one and a half years.

“I was looking for a peaceful space in my life and Dubai offered me the quiet I was looking for,” he says in a chat with City Times.

“Dubai Marina and quiet,” you might ask. His plush Marina apartment furnished aesthetically, and overlooking the Marina Walk, is peaceful indeed. A space where he steps down to jog regularly, work out, meet friends and most importantly, write!

Dubai, he says, "has brought me back to being myself and what I do best.”

“Most people have an Instagram idea of Dubai often seen as a hyper-luxurious destination and endless parties," he adds. "But there is a 5am Dubai too where people are running, swimming in the open sea, doing yoga, cycling, eating clean - it is a city on the move, in the right direction.”

Bhagat has just released his latest book 12 Years, My Messed Up Love Story and Dubai is a significant part of it.

His protagonist is a 21-year-old girl in love with a divorced 33-year-old man, and how that love blossoms. The book addresses love, lust, situation-ships, the lost art of yearning, conservative families that give rise to dual personalities, emotional decisions and more.

Often during his motivational talks around the world, Bhagat encountered students confiding their life problems to him stating how they were in varied kinds of relationships.

“In my book, 2 States, that was released in 2009, the couple had to convince their parents to accept their love. Today in 2025, Gen Z couples are confused whether they are really in love or in lust,” adds Bhagat.

“We live in a world of situation-ships and terms like ghosting, benching, red flags, etc. I feel that each one of us has red flags, and if you keep counting that in each other, you will never have a relationship. Most people are looking for 'the special one' in their lives and no love story ends with, now I have 4 boy/girl friends from a dating app and we lived happily ever after,” laughs Bhagat.

The book talks of hope and is a conscious attempt to create light content.“Most content today is filled with violence," he says. "OTT platforms are full of series on serial killers, murder mysteries, slaughter, blood and gore and the paranormal. Don't we need alternative stories?”

Is Bhagat disillusioned by Bollywood?

The 51-year-old writes because he has a passion for writing. That is how Five Point Someone happened, he says, "I had no clue then that the book would skyrocket me to enormous fame and become the basis of the much-acclaimed film 3 Idiots.”

Then after six movies and other books, with Two States becoming a raging hit, the IIT, IIMA graduate and former banker was inundated with the vestiges of fame - glitz, glamour, movies, PR appearances, sales, revenue, and the works. Bhagat admits that he did a good job of it all but being in the big league took away one important thing - the joy of writing and the original reason why a boy from a middle-class family ventured into this space.“I was so distracted by fame that it gave me no joy to create. I decided to fix things to get the zing back,” he says.

It was like the same time when he lost interest in investment banking and a really high-paying job to start his career as a writer.“Working in the film industry is addictive - you have your skyrocketing highs and dismal lows. It gave me immense fame and recognition, but the inner joy wasn't there. The real joy to me was in writing, and I found my way back to it.”

Turning 50

The acclaimed author says hitting the big 50-mark has changed him. "My boys are older and in college now. No, we are not empty nesters - we live in that nest we created! Till now I had focussed on external growth; now the journey is internal," he says. "I do my inner work, including Vipassana, though physical fitness started in my forties. I now live to thrive and not to tell the world I am successful. I love fast cars, but I want to drive them because I enjoy them, not because I want to post about them. I live a quiet life not to show the world but to really live in it.”

Chetan Bhagat has been called 'love guru', a term he detests. So what is the measure of real love?

“Longevity. If a relationship sustains time, then it must be true love, but you never really know even then,” he states. Maybe that's a topic for another book.

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