“Coming to a Multiplex Near You”: Indian Fiction in English and New Bollywood Cinema

Abstract

The story of the adaptation of Chetan Bhagat's best-selling 2004 debut, Five Point Someone , into the blockbuster Bollywood film 3 Idiots (dir. Rajkumar Hirani, 2009) is an interesting one. While most discussions around an adaptation stress how different the film is from the book, Bhagat and his fans stress how similar the two properties are, insisting that perhaps the author should have received greater prominence in the film's credits and promotion than he did. Bollywood has a long history of borrowing (to be generous) plots and ideas from other (especially Hollywood) films, but the case of 3 Idiots is not one of intellectual property, as both parties agree that no legal injury has been done to the author. The film's producer, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, director, Rajkumar Hirani, and star, Aamir Khan, have averred that although Bhagat had been given his due, he was generating controversy in order to cash in on the film's success. Bhagat and his supporters agree in a sense by suggesting that his claims are moral rather than legal. Given how closely the film resembles the novel – down to such details as the red Maruti 800 car featured in several scenes – Bhagat's supporters stress that the author of the bestselling novel on which 3 Idiots is based should have received a little more airtime in the media blitz that preceded and followed the release of the film. They repeatedly contrast Bhagat's shoddy treatment at the hands of a Bollywood producer to that of Vikas Swarup, on whose novel Q&A (2005) the international hit Slumdog Millionaire (dir. Danny Boyle, 2008) was based. While Swarup was front and center at all events celebrating the film's phenomenal success, including at the Oscars, Bhagat's name appeared just once in the credits for 3 Idiots and that too at a very low billing! For an English-language novelist such as Bhagat to desire a closer association with a blockbuster Hindi film such as 3 Idiots is indeed noteworthy if we consider the cultural dynamics that have historically kept the Indian novel in English at a great remove from the Hindi popular cinema.