On the Film-Book Controversy

A debate is going on whether the story of the movie "3 idiots" is a self creation of the script writer or it was adapted from the famous novel "Five Point Someone" by Chetan Bhagat. I personally think it is not a unique creation but a mere copy of the original novel with some additions and twists in the story. I cannot enumerate how much is taken from the book in percentage terms, but I can give you some basic facts.

Well, my views on the controversy may not be unbiased since I’m having a strong fascination for the book, but, at the end of the day, facts remain facts. The book “Five Point Someone” came in the market in 2005 when I was a student of JNU. IIT Delhi and JNU being neighbours to each other, I found many a similarities between our day to day activities and that of the characters in the novel. After reading the book I along with my peer group saw that the description of hostel life mentioned in the book had many things in common with ours – the ragging, the professors with their boring lectures, sleepless nights before exams, fun with friends, eating at dhaba, boozing well beyond one’s capacity … and so on. The book narrates them without pointing out anything wrong or right. Basically this was the main reason for the book being a super hit among the youths. The crux of the book as is a mere narration of facts of the IIT days of the author. The writer did not take any stance on any particular subject; he left it to the readers.

Coming to the book-film controversy, one can easily see that the basic things remain unchanged in the movie. Three friends meet in a ragging session. One of them is damn rich (Ryan); one of them (Alok) is having a paralysed father, an unmarried sister and a mother who manages everything and a third character (Hari) who does not talk about himself much except having a military father. Their first class starts with the definition of machine. The angry Dean with his hot daughter a medical student is there. His son committed suicide as he couldn’t clear one entrance exam. The hero falls in love with the Dean’s daughter. The cramming before exam, bunking the classes, the hostility between the Dean and the troika, the south Indian guy who mugs up everything to score good grades, the hero’s proposing the heroin in a drunk state, the poor guy’s jumping from a high place… everything are there. There are many other trivial things which I am ignoring since my aim is not to calculate the percentage of adaptation, but to show that the movie is made taking the book as a base.

Chetan Bhagat didn’t emphasise on any particular aspect, he portrayed the life of students in a reputed institution. The script writer has focused on the message about the education system and got so much applause. But surely the idea was not unique. The suicide of the son of the Dean, Alok’s devotion to god just to get well established in life and later his attempt to suicide, cramming and mugging up before exam, unfair competition to become first in the rat race… everything are there in the book and together point at the failure of the education system. The script writer had included some characters and a few incidents for recreation. The most important thing is that the hero and heroin get married at the end; otherwise the film would be a flop.

I will not comment whether Chetan's claim that he was ignored all together was true or false, since, I came to know this fact only after reading news papers and blogs. I can only say that, it is not so difficult to pick up a famous novel, add some characters and incidents, change the ending and twist the story a little bit to convey the implicit message. The script writer has just done that. He has not written a sole new story.