3 Idiots – Raju Hirani, Aamir khan & Vidhu Vinod Chopra

Key Characters:

Aamir Khan: Respected actor. He can go wrong at times too. And he did, with a disappointing performance in 3 idiots. Tried too hard to pull off a 20-something. Having been christened ‘the perfectionist’, he is known to take his roles very seriously and go deep into the character he is portraying. But here, unfortunately the only thing that got in deep was the botox in his face. Has an opinion on almost anything. Last I heard the man gave his expert opinion on the isotropic pressure forming of complicated shape body using Bingham fluid.

Raju Hirani: Director par excellence. Started out editing ad films, and even acted in one. Known to work extremely hard on his scripts. Mastered his craft to the extent where he can make the most boring of storylines come alive on screen. But he has clearly forgotten that he still needs boring storylines from somewhere to make his movies.

Chetan Bhagat: IIT pass-out, IIM pass-out and a successful investment banker. And then he began writing. (Quite a sad day for English Literature that.) His first book ‘Five Point Someone’ is the largest selling fiction book in the India. After which he just didn’t stop writing, even if he had nothing to write about.

Devaiah: Studied film making at FTII. Showed tremendous promise during his younger days, even winning the National Award while still in college. Also got an Academy Award nomination for a short film he directed during his early years. But now, he’s just another has been trying to come to terms with his creative burnout. Last directed a good movie in 1993, an Anil Kapoor starer, ‘1942: A Love Story’. Since then his main job involves collecting awards at functions whenever Raju Hirani fails to show up. He also took time off from this busy schedule to produce good movies like the Munnabhai series, 3 idiots and Parineeta. Basically living on somebody else’s glory.

Vidhu Vinod Chopra: Small time copywriter in an advertising agency.

(Oops… Sorry Mr. Chopra... It does hurt when you aren’t given credit for what you’ve done, right? Good or bad.)


The recent spat between the makers of 3 idiots and Chetan Bhagat rings up an important issue. Are writers today given their due in Bollywood?

Chetan claims that his name doesn’t appear prominently in the credits, and that it is stashed away somewhere in no man’s sight. The makers counter by saying that his contribution wasn’t important enough to be mentioned in the main credits, as their movie borrows only “5% of the book”, ‘Five Point Someone’.

After having read the book (and almost having killed myself for doing so), I must admit the movie is unquestionably based on the book. In fact, it borrows heavily from the book. And also, certain scenes are shamelessly borrowed from international TV commercials too. The idea of three friends finding themselves in an IIT hostel, one of them romancing principal’s daughter and certain other episodes in the movie definitely trace its origins back to the book. Having said this, I must admit, hand on heart, this movie is definitely better than the book.

Yet the makers decided to credit Vidhu Vinod Chopra as Associate Screenplay writer, well ahead of Chethan’s contribution. Chetan’s was tucked away in the end as part of the rolling credits which invariably is never played in the cinema halls.

Now it’s a different story that they acquired movie rights of the book from Bhagat for a meager sum of 10 lacs. All this for a movie that grossed 100 Cr at the box office in just 4 days! I have heard of stories in Bollywood where writers have been humiliated and exploited. Without taking any names, there have been instances when leading film makers have taken the credit for writing the story and screenplay by paying peanuts to the lesser known original writers, whose only worry is clearing pending EMIs.

Having watched the movie Slumdog Millionaire, and read the book Q&A (the book which the movie is based on), I can tell you with certainty that the movie isn’t an exact replica of the book. If it was, it would’ve turned out to be a better movie.

For example, the whole Frieda Pinto angle never existed in the book. Same holds good with Irfan Khan’s character in the movie. And Jamal’s friend never betrayed Jamal in the book. And Jamal is not Jamal in the book. He is Ram Mohammad Thomas. In fact the endings don’t even match or come close to being on the same page.

The script for Slumdog was written from scratch, new characters woven in, the story made more cinema-friendly, and only the core essence of the movie and the book remained the same. Thinking back, I feel there is more of ‘Five Point Someone’ in ‘3 Idiots’ than there is ‘Q&A’ in ‘Slumdog’. Yet, when Slumdog won the Academy Award for the best screenplay, the first person to be thanked by the screenwriters was Vikas Swarup, the author of Q&A. Swarup was also part of the main credits, and it clearly mentioned to the viewer that the movie is based on the book, Q&A.

The question here is not whether the movie is similar to the book by 5% or 50%. The question here is about learning to give credit where it is due. In fact, it should be the answer. It causes great amount of heartburn to note that writers in Bollywood these days are treated like cow dung in remote villages. You know it adds immense value to your crop but you’re just not willing to pay for it.

This is a short story written by me for "Kathalaya", an organization that promotes story telling. The campaign's underlying thought was, "there's a story everywhere".
Stories were stuck on random objects ranging from a chair to a tree.
I wrote this story posing as a bookshelf in a book store.

The God Of Ad Things.

Contrary to what many people believe, I work too.
As one copywriter put it, "We write lines to make people buy things that they don't actually require." So much to convince my mom!!

I don't blame people for taking our profession so lightly. It basically stems from the fact that people just read a line written on a hoarding, and assume that they would've done a better job writing that line. Well, even i thought that way and got duped into believing its so easy that I can do it any time of the day. I figured later on that days notwithstanding, even during nights I had a problem writing that one line.

As David Ogilvy once put it, "people think they know everything about two things. Sex and advertising." People always think great ideas can come from anywhere. Why does the world need copywriters to work full time. Such waste of resources. But then, another copywriter had a fitting answer to that. "Great ideas can come from anywhere- my ass."

Constantly churning out stuff is no child's play. We're in the business of building and sustaining brands. Last week I had the opportunity of being addressed by an advertising guru, the man who built brands such as Asian paints, Cadbury and Fevicol to name a few.
The name is Pandey. Piyush Pandey. The bond... The Fevicol bond of Indian Advertising.

Also encouraging is that he happens to be my boss's boss's boss's boss. So yeah, I can claim to be working under him. Rather working in his under's under's under's under.

First impressions.
Cocky. He has reason to be.
Confident. He has reason to be.
In love with me. He has reason to be. (I really didn't know what else to add)

His opening lines to us were, "Speculations are rife that I'm retiring soon. Well, no. I still haven't finished humping my competitors. I have humped them for 15 years now, and i will do so for another 15."

The story of how one of the Cadbury campaigns came into being was quite entertaining. While holidaying in Hawaii, Piyush got a call from his partner in Bombay saying, "What the fc*k! Cadbury has called for a pitch!"
With no time to spare, Piyush booked his return ticket to India. Meanwhile, waiting to board the plane, Piyush started work on the campaign.
And those memorable Cadbury commercials that eventually ran on TV are the ones that were written behind the boarding pass! This campaign was bloody successful and it went on to become a case study at the Harvard Business School in the years that followed.

Well that says two things about Harvard.
You don't have to be at Harvard to study at Harvard.
You can be an outsider and let Harvard study you.
To cut a long story short, I'll cut it here.

Between then and now

Guess who's back?
That doesn't mean I was backless until now (you never know, maybe I was). Let’s get straight to the point. Well not yet, because I still don't have a point to make.

That's predominantly the reason why I haven't blogged in a while.
Because people don't have a point. But they have a blog. Folks just put meaningless sentences together to make a nonexistent point on a blog just to be perceived cool.
Also, it’s been a long time since I have been perceived cool, so I thought I'll give blogging a shot!!

I'm sure my blog records numerous hits, unfortunately most of them mine. What do I have to do for people to read this? Just read this and let me know. (Intelligent line that. Maybe my definition of intelligent is not intelligent enough) Hence, to be read you need to understand your audience well, it’s easier when the audience is just me.

I'm sure 20 years down I'll be the only one reading this.

"Hey Devaiah,

You must be 40 now. (Wait, isn't 22+20=42) I know what you are thinking. But yes, you still hadn't quite understood addition back then. I congratulate you if you are divorced twice. Not bad at all, at least two women thought they could live with you. If you aren't, too bad for you. Maybe your marriage is still on which is worse.

Well let me give you a quick recap. You had just finished your engineering. You became a writer (now it must be evident that it was a bad career move). Your friends were all successful (bet that hasn't changed much, has it). It was a winter when the world was going mad. But fashionably mad. Terrorists wore versache (your spellings sucked even then) before taking an entire city hostage. You were still (lol) a virgin. Obama had just resumed office. I'm sure now a 5th Bush must be at the helm. Those dumb Americans. Did you watch terminator 9? Or Rocky 13? I'm sure you didn't. But I can bet my life(the fact you survived means I won the bet) that you wept at the end of Dhoom 19.0!

I'm sure you still lose your temper. ("Hell no") Of course you do. ("Bull shit no"). You just did.

Anyways, hope you’ve finally realized that you aren't funny. Get a life, and please don't sit down to write a letter that you will read when you are 60.

Regards,
Devaiah"



"Hey Devaiah,

You must be 60 now. (wait, isn't 42+20=62) I know what you are thinking. But yes, you still hadn't quite understood.....................

GANDHI BIZZARE

Fear of losing what I had, always haunted me for as long as I can remember. The fear of losing what I will have is never far behind either. Like all of my fears, this one too had the better of me. I had lost. As sadness filled my heart the world surrounding me turned dark. So did the world within me. And if you thrive on sad stories such as these, I’m sorry you wouldn’t find it here!!

If logic and reasoning is your forte, then no-logic-no-reasoning is mine. But if you are getting bored or if you wish to get bored, then the next few lines are something you can surrender yourself to. And then you may realize suicide would have been a better option!! The following events in the article have no connection (or cross connection) to one another. Its just here to fill up space, both in your head as well as mine…(last chance for you to back out!)

BMS(my college) has produced and reproduced (after all many repetitions constitute a successful experiment) some of our country’s finest engineers. A few of them constructed sky scrappers, some of them designed swanky cars and the more intelligent ones took the car and paid a visit to their friend who built the sky scrapper. The common thread that runs through all the three aforementioned categories of people is the BMS canteen. I’m quite sure they spent quality (and quantity!) time in “that place”. This place in particular may have inspired their creative creations. So next time you spot a successful BMSite you know why he is up there. Its because of “that place”. The food served in canteen is also an effective tool for their creativity.

After eating the effects can drastic. Side effects, upside effects and opposite of upside effects… I can’t help but think what would have happened (or not happened) if some famous scientists or physicists had eaten in “that place”. In what way would it have changed the world that we live in. Take Issac Newton for example. If he would have eaten in our canteen the Newton’s second law wouldn’t have been Newton’s second law. It would have read, as “ The rate of change of motion is directly proportional to what you have eaten!” ( pun perfectly intended)

Cricketers world over are complaining over their hectic touring timetable, which they say can result in fatigue. Many countries have also approached the ICC (big deal, even I can see C) regarding this matter. These people have even proved the scientists wrong by saying matter exists in five states solids, liquids, gases, plasma and excessive touring!! (Yeah got it. that line shouldn’t have made it to the final copy). In India too this over touring is an area of concern with many senior players having already approached the BCCI. As this write up progresses I will keep you informed on the whereabouts of our Indian cricketers whose touring is of major concern…



If you haven’t noticed, off late majority of the students in BMSCE are hurt. They suffer from serious “internals” injuries. INDIAN CRICKET TEAM IN WEST INDIES. When the going gets tough the tough get going. But during these tough times some of our fellow BMSites exuded what they are truly made of. INDIAN TEAM IN AUSTRALIA. In this country that we call home, the nature of the people present can be classified into three categories. Outgoing, reserved and reservation. The backlash against the government over their reservation policy a few months back had been sensational to say the least. The reservation of seats in all Government colleges had unleashed fury among the youth. Why look so far, when reservation of seats are found to occur even in our departments! The reservation of “seats” during internals is indeed a very common sight with students coming nearly two hours in advance to reserve their favourite seats!
INDIAN TEAM NOW IN ENGLAND. Well from a personal point of view I suggest that people kick this murderous habit as VTU is known to come down heavily on examination hallpractice (malpractice, I mean!). INDIAN TEAM IN SHARGAH.


The Indian team was last seen in Chinaswamy stadium practising for the upcoming series against Bangladesh. The players looked fatigued as they just returned from sharagh completing their month long tour of WEST INDIES, AUSTRALIA, ENGLAND and SHARGAH to shoot their latest cola ad!!

P.S: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, but how I wish all play and no work made him an intelligent one.