I haven't had a vacation in such a long time," sighs Chetan Bhagat, the man who's made a chunk of middle-India sit up and read (in English), single-handedly redefining the meaning of a bestseller in a country where it has often meant just 5,000 copies. Bhagat's last two books sold seven lakh copies each; his latest, The Three Mistakes of My Life, a somewhat Bollywoodesque mix of politics, cricket and religion in small-town Bharat, managed two lakh copies in its first two days, a figure that Bhagat quotes when I meet him on the third day. All this, even as critics carp about his writing, formulaic plots and "unwriterly" marketing tactics. But Bhagat is not ashamed. He agrees he writes just as he speaks the language, in the manner of any robust Dilliwala. And he staunchly defends his initiatives to push up sales. "If I can do this part-time and come up with ways to sell more, what's so great? What are marketing teams at other publishing houses who get paid to do this stuff doing?" You can't argue with that, writes Anoothi Vishal.

Mother has travelled all the way from Dwarka, where she lives, to the India International Centre, where Bhagat is putting up on the Delhi leg of the launch. He says he has managed a membership through the NRI quota at this hallowed institution with a regard for post-retirement years, and only jokingly suggests that he sought it out not the least for the dhaniya-paneer in the dining hall. Since this is just a day prior to Mother's Day, we agree it is only fitting that Mother joins us. Alas, the dhaniya-paneer seems to have been taken off the menu. But that's the least of our problems. Although we spot enough empty tables, none are available to us.

"Did you make a booking?" sniffs the maître d'-equivalent of this rarified space, "they are all taken." We contemplate going back to the author's room for a room-service meal, but I haven't yet contended with his persuasive charm. While I have yet to see an instance where the line "don't you know who I am?" has worked at the IIC, unlike everywhere else in Delhi, when Bhagat pleads in a refreshingly un-elitist tone, it works. He first tries to convince the maître d'-equivalent that "we'll eat quickly and go" and then "Bhaiyya, ek to dhoondh do (Brother, just find me one table), anywhere." It works! Not one but two tables are found — including one for the PR staff accompanying him.

"I can chat with the driver just as easily as I can with a CEO," Bhagat tells me just as he places the order: paneer bhurji, mushroom and green onions, the current hot favourite on the menu, yellow dal and stuffed onion kulchas for Mother. I have been complementing the writer about his connect with people, a conclusion that no one who has met him can fail to arrive at. With Mother chipping in, we chat happily about domestic arrangements (his, mine and even filmmaker Farah Khan's, who is a friend and who apparently has six nurses and nannies to manage her triplets), work and Bhagat's past when as a student at the Army Public School, he'd dreamt of becoming a chef, certainly not an engineer-manager of IIT-IIM pedigree. "But those days parents would be embarrassed if one became a cook (Mother smiles)." Mother remembers how Bhagat would experiment in the kitchen. "He'd try to make tea in a spoon," she reveals and he adds how he would get stuff from the chemistry lab and do experiments such as electrolysis in the kitchen.

Bhagat's subsequent years as an IIT Delhi student are well-documented in his first book, Five Point Someone (it unleashed an entire genre of similar, coming-of-age writing). But the first time he realised that he should pursue something more people-oriented was when he went to a Cadbury's unit near Pune for his summer training. "I was a mechanical engineer and all my classmates had chosen serious assignments with automobile companies and the like. Here I was trying to fix a lollipop wrapping machine!" For the record, Bhagat's choice of work was governed by his love for chocolate ("I thought I'd get free chocolate…"), but his work for the summer was cut out: no one could figure out the problem with the packing machine. Then, Bhagat lucked out. One day, he got chatting with the supervisor on the floor. It was late in the night and the two sat in the workers' canteen over tea talking about the latter's family problems. "He told me about his daughters and how worried he was about getting them married. We connected. Two days after that, the machine was working… Here was a guy who had spent years with that machine and knew it intimately but no one had paid him any attention before… that was my project."

These days Bhagat is almost a star. Mother says she is constantly asked as to how she brought him up and "she gets many more dinner invites too," he chimes in. But one thing she constantly asks him to do is to stay grounded. "Chetan introduced me to Shah Rukh Khan and I was impressed when he (SRK) pulled out a chair for me. This is what we must learn from celebrities," she says, very much middle-class. But if you've been wondering about this sudden turn in conversation, it is because, as we already know, Bhagat has new associations with Bollywood.

His second book (One Night At the Call Centre) has been made into a film called Hello, starring Salman Khan, and will be out this summer. His first one is being turned into Idiot by Munnabhai-director Raju Hirani. Bhagat is deluged by offers to turn full-time scriptwriter. "I can afford to do that now," he says. It began typically due to his people-savvy. On the verge of publishing his second book, he saw pictures of actress Vidya Balan, fresh after Parineeta, releasing a book. "I thought why not get her to release my book since she was into launches anyway," he says candidly. So he picked up the phone and asked the actress as much. She declined but passed on the contact details of Hirani since she thought he would appreciate Bhagat's "type of books". The director was busy, Bhagat sent him a copy nevertheless, and the result is now there for all to see. "To thank Vidya, I decided to name a character in my book (Three Mistakes…) after her," Bhagat says.

Bhagat has other friends in the film fraternity, many of whom he has thanked in his book. But he is clear that, for now, he cannot really be a part of "that world"— apart from simply being there to do "quality work". "To be part of Salman's (Khan) world," for instance, "I would have to spend four hours in the gym with him, go to parties at 11 pm at his house. But I can't do that, I have to get to office the next day." And yet, as the three of us split a dessert, the IIC's much-loved honey-fig ice-cream, Bhagat, who fittingly enough loves Govinda films, remarks that like Shah Rukh Khan, he too wants to be a "complete entertainer".

He could well be that. The book launches, for one, are not your slightly-boring soirees. They are energetic mass events where the author has even acted out scenes from his books alongside his Bollywood pals. Refreshingly, thanks to a tie-up with the Future Group (Bhagat simply picked up the phone and introduced himself to Kishore Biyani), the latest book has been launched in Big Bazaar stores. "In Mumbai, where we did the launch at Phoenix Mills, there were 900 people from far-off places like Vashi and Kalyan," he says. Many couldn't even speak English, he adds.

This is the scene that stays with me as we bid goodbye.