The best way to market your blog is by writing about the breaking news :) As high court rulings on religious hatred and Srinagar bombings are not of interest to my already depleted reader base, I thought I will give my views about the raging controversy between 3 idiots and 5 point someone.
I read 5 point someone when I was in college and just loved the book because I could identify with the life at a national college depicted in the book. The book will remain as one of my all time favorites. After seeing the movie 3 idiots, I cannot think about a better treatment that book could have met. Rajkumar Hirani has successfully created a motivating story perfect for a movie of mass appeal(read it as complete bollywood movie with all key ingredients- heroism, masala and romance)out of a book which was a simple, honest portrayal of Chetan Bhagat's exposure at IIT Delhi. The way the director has stitched together an entertainer while keeping the backbone intact is admirable. If you have noticed, the director has filmed the movie in such a way that all the sub-plots of the book - Hari's love story with the director's daughter, Ryan's perpetual machine, prof. Veera etc have either got removed or tweaked or merged together to make it look like a single rhetoric. The key aspect of the book which was loved by people like me- the iconoclastic Ryan(Rancho), the deep rooted friendship in the jungle of competition, an egomaniac professor and the life at IIT forms the basis of the movie.
Some key changes introduced by the script team has been a superman Rancho(he topped instead of finishing at the bottom of the class like Ryan), the humor touch given to the Chathur's character, the wrapper plot in which Rancho turns out to be an impostor and most importantly how the 3 idiots successfully change the system and become successful subsequently. Over and above, the script has incorporated some contents from e-mail forwards very cleverly at key areas. For eg:- pencil and pen on space. All in all, I reiterate the movie is brilliant and has been able to fix every single problem the book had.
Coming to the controversy, I really don't understand what is Chetan Bhagat claiming now. According to the contract uploaded on Vidhu Vinod Chopra's website which CB signed he has sold his novel for 11 lakhs allowing VVC and Hirani to adapt it any format they want. Now when the movie made 240 crores, he realized that his price tag was too less. I used to respect CB after I read 5 point someone. But his next 2 novels "one night at call center" and "3 mistakes of my life" were abysmally poor works of literature and were no better than a third rate bollywood movie. After wasting time on those 2 books, I decided that he was just a one book wonder and "Five point someone" had more to do with his life at IIT and his observations there rather than his skill as a writer. Anyway I heard the "2 states" is good, may be he followed the same old formula again, only difference is this time it is life at IIM. :) I agree that the books I mentioned were "best sellers", so may be he is keeping his reader base happy. So please see the above details as my personal opinion. The worst thing, CB could have done is the unwanted press interviews after the controversy. In an interview he gave to TOI, he was literally wailing like a child. The immaturity with which he was complaining to the reporter about how his mother missed his name in credits and how he plans to leave writing and join ISKON is not accepted from the IIT-IIM educated India's best selling English author.
