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Aamir Khan, Raju Hirani, Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Chetan Bhagat couldn’t have given us a better beginning to 2010 if they had planned it (actually, had they?).

The fracas over 3 Idiots was worth several chuckles and several more hours of television drama. And how serendipitous for commentators and columnists was the name of the film. Suppose it had been called ‘Three Friends’ or ‘College yaar yaar’ or ‘Teen bindaas’?But, no, they kindly gave us ‘3 Idiots’. And went on to prove how true that is with their idiotic behaviour.

I have not seen the film 3 Idiots and I have only flipped through Chetan Bhagat’s Five Point Someone. The film is a huge hit and the book sold in millions. But apart from the childish behaviour of all the protagonists in this battle over copyright, story credit and the subsequent drama in front of the media, there is also the issue of writers and their rights. It may be in artistic terms that the film is superior to the book. Bhagat is not the world’s best writer but he is a phenomenal success. Hirani, Chopra and Khan may well have come up with a better product and improved upon the book. But they appear to have been mean and petty about giving due credit.

The fact is, the idea and the story belonged to Bhagat and in all fairness, he should have got a better deal than a line at the end of the film. Of course, one can take a contrarian view that Bhagat should be grateful that someone in the film industry actually read a book — this is extremely rare in Mumbai judging from the films that are made — and then honoured him further by basing a film on it.

Story ideas for films in Bollywood have often been decided on a day to day basis while shooting is going on, as is well known. For someone to have actually read a book and written a script and screenplay — Abhijat Joshi and Hirani — is a rarity for Bollywood. Casual enquiries made to friends and colleagues and a trawl through memory banks could not come up with too many examples.

Yes, Satyajit Ray used novels and stories, notably Rabindranath Tagore, Bibhutibhushan Bandyapadhyay, Premchand, as did Bimal Roy and Gulzar. More recently, Vishal Bharadwaj used Othello and Macbeth from Shakespeare. And Devdas by Sarat Chandra Chatterjee must be the most-read book by Indian filmmakers; alternatively they could have all just seen one of the
several movies based on that story.

RK Narayan had a fairly harrowing time during the making of Guide and much as the film is wonderful, the writer remained traumatised. This is perhaps natural — the demands of cinema are specific and stories have to be either changed substantially or tinkered with so that they suit the screen. But Narayan at least was given full credit. This, for a writer, is the least expectation. The idea that a thought has intellectual property rights is meagrely understood, especially in this country. See how easily our music directors “borrow” tunes and then claim they were paying “homage”?

Bhagat joins a list of writers who can also claim that their intellectual property was mauled by filmmakers. This is another category of writers who feel they might have been better off if no one had made film out of their work. This is common in Hollywood, as studios change at will. Perhaps Bhagat himself felt that about Hello, based on his One Night at a Call Centre, since we never heard too much about that. Surely, if Jane Austen had been alive, she would have been quite shattered at what Gurinder Chhada did to Pride and Prejudice. She would need all of her sense of humour to have survived it.

The petty drama of the various idiots aside, it now seems that Bollywood has learnt to read. There’s a film due based on Austen’s Emma and another on Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.

Unfortunately for the drama-searchers, both authors are long dead. Still, Bhagat’s protests have brought the plight of the poor writer to the forefront. Now, let’s see how the idiots make good.