Why Chetan Bhagat has to move on

Note: Spoilers inside, read it at your own risk

Before going to the main theme of this post, I would wish to reveal why I am interested (or rather curious) about the 3 Idiots – Five Point someone debate. First, I have read FPS and I really enjoyed it, mainly because of the way I could connect it with my college days. The simple style of writing and the interesting twists in the story made it a very good read for the common man. Second, 3 Idiots was shot in my college campus (IIM-B) and I have seen the trio (Aamir, Maddy and Sharman) several times. I have even seen Aamir, Chetan Bhagat and  Raju Hirani together in the campus ( I wish I had that photo today, I am sure it would have come up in the media). One of my current professors (Prof. Raghunath) even makes a brief guest appearance!

After having seen all the debates on TV and other media regarding the issue of rightful ownership of “3 Idiots” story, I was curious to watch the movie and managed to get tickets for Sunday afternoon show (had to book it 3 days in advance). After watching the movie, I feel that

a)      The movie is significantly different from Chetan Bhagat’s book “Five point someone”(FPS)

b)      The story and screenplay definitely belongs to Abhijit Joshi and Raju Hirani. Except for the concept of 3 friends in Engineering college, ragging, stealing question paper, there is no similarity between the book and movie.

Above all, the fundamental concept behind the book and movie is drastically different. The FPS book talks about “What one should not do in IIT”, whereas the theme of the movie is “Excellence in education”. Even if Mr.Bhagat claims that the idea of 3 friends in college, ragging, stealing paper are his, haven’t we seen such things in cinema before? For that matter, Raju Hirani’s earlier film “Munnbhai MBBS” even featured a similar ragging scene. I am not convinced with the claim of “70% similar to book”. Some key points in the movie such as Chathur Ramalingam’s bet, Rancho’s original identity, “The” speech, “Follow your passion” twist (for Farhan and Raju) are all fantastic twists which doesn’t figure in the book. Don’t even try comparing the book and the movie!

Chetan’s problem is that his credit did not appear in the beginning titles and was pushed to the end of the movie . In fact, most multiplexes don’t even screen the end credits to save time. Since there is a legal contract which he has signed, he should have probably been cautious about this issue, if he really cared about the location of his credit. But should that really hurt you Mr.Bhagat? You are the “India’s most widely read English author”, you have a fan following of your own and I am sure that you have lot more good stuff in you! Five point someone is an excellent book and your fans want it to be remembered only for Five point someone and not for 3 Idiots controversy. Even without this controversy, the media was writing that 3 Idiots was based on Five point someone, so that connection has been inherently established. I humbly feel that just by placing your name in the beginning of titles won’t make much difference.

If you haven’t read the FPS book, go ahead and read it. If you haven’t seen the movie, go and watch it. I am sure you will like both!

 

p.s: I also watched Avatar-3D, it is awesome! But as my wife rightly said, had it been in 2D, it wouldn’t have run for so long in India J