Half Girlfriend Chetan Bhagat
Madhav Jha comes to a Delhi college from small-town Bihar, speaks poor English among fluent classmates, and falls for Riya Somani, a wealthy Delhi girl who plays basketball with him and will go no further than friendship. The phrase he lands on for what she is to him gives the book its title. Bhagat writes plainly and fast, with class and language anxiety doing most of the work under the romance. Enormously popular in India and adapted for film, and more interesting on the English-speaking divide than on the love story.