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Chetan Bhagat, the author of Five Point Someone, hugely successful novel about Three IITian Idiots, has decided to write a book on Gandhigiri, to avenge the injustice done to him by “those responsible for stealing the story of Five Points Someone without giving fair credits”.
“I don’t want to name names”, said an unusually philosophical Bhagat in an exclusive interview to KBNN, “yet anyone who has his eyes and ears open for the last few days should know who I am talking about”
Bhagat has been at loggerheads with ‘those’ people, over story credits, or lack of them, for Three Idiots. The movie is allegedly based on Bhagat’s Five Point Someone, although it’s not clear how much percentage of the story is inspired from the book. Industry watchers have been divided in their opinions.
“It’s about 2 to 5 per cent”, claimed an industry source closer to Vidu Vinod Chopra, the producer of the movie. “There are three protagonists, and one female lead, that’s where the similarity ends”
However, rival sources claimed the the movie is approximately 98.8% based on the book.
The viewer consensus is somewhere in between. The Indian twitter community is engaged in giving justice to @chetan_bhagat, however, by now they must have moved to a new real-time justice trend.
Bhagat, in the meanwhile, is refusing to take the injustice lying down.
The truth is on my side
“I do not care about the money or the publicity”, he told KBNN, “but the truth has to come out. I thought a lot about how I could make them accept their mistake. I almost gave up, but then I got inspired by Lage Raho, and decided to fight with Gandhigiri. I am not an activist. I’m a writer. So I said to myself: Chetan, fight by writing a book”
The book, whose rights have already been bought by a leading international publisher for an undisclosed (rumored to be an Indian record) amount, deals with a the subject of how a writer is exploited by the Bollywood machine, and how he fights back using gandhigiri. The main protagonist of the movie, a writer (loosely based on Bhagat), is not given fair credit for the story that’s based on his novel, uses ‘get well soon’ cards as his main weapon. A radio jockey who later falls in love with him, helps him by popularizing his cause on air. The internet community comes to the writers aid and sends lots of e-roses to Facebook account of the producer, director and leading actor in the movie. Flooded with all those e-roses, the Bollowood guys realize their mistake, and release new prints of the movies, with name of the author and his photograph flashed even before the opening credits”
But wouldn’t this be lifting of the story of Lage Raho?
“One can say it’s loosely based on Lage Raho”, agrees Bhagat, “but all the situations, dialogs, and names are original. I’d say it’s about 2-5% based on the movie”
The ‘people responsible for the injustice’ were not available for comment.
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