Bollywood movies based on Short stories

The annual academy awards better known as the Oscars have a distinct recognition for the 'Best Adapted screenplay', which at least sees 5 movies being nominated every time. The competition is so hard that this year an adaptation like Gone Girl couldn't make the cut, and then when we look at our own vast mythological and literature background, the amount of films we come up through books is really limited. DevDas and Romeo and Juliet seem to be the most popular ones on the celluloid but things have been changing; many of the big upcoming projects like Dibakar Banerjee's Detective Byomkesh Bakshy, Anurag Kashyap's Bombay Velvet and Abhishek Kapoor's Fitoor have a literature base which ensures not only a solid story but also a more relatable connection between the book readers and the film lovers.
Going beyond however, some Indian filmmakers have even tried out their hands on mere short stories, a few pages long which were then scripted into Feature length films, here is looking at a list of Indian films which are adaptations of some brilliant short stories.

Ghajini from Mememto Mori by Jonathan Nolan: Ghajini is often taken as a remake of Christopher Nolan's breakout movie Memento, a myth which one can easily clear when they actually watch both as well as read the short story titled Memento Mori written by his brother Jonathan Nolan. The ideas of anterograde amnesia and body tattoos were the only common factor among the three. The screenplay of Memento was written by Christopher Nolan based on a few inputs from Memento Mori, later on the story was adapted as the Tamil version of Ghajini which was then re-made into hindi as the Aamir Khan starrer. The most notable thing is that the Christopher Nolan movie never even had a character equivalent to Ghajini or the 2 female leads played by Asin and Jiah Khan.

Lootera from The Last Leaf by O. Henry: A beautifully crafted masterpiece many said, Vikramaditya Motwane's Lootera's first half was based on a real heist story while the second half was an adaptation of The Last Leaf, written by one of the best short story architects ever born; O. Henry. The use of 'Last Leaf' in the song Zinda is mesmerizing. A very interesting thing is that, while Lootera is a proper romantic story, The Last Leaf however is a tale of love of an old painter named Behrman for his art and the urge to create a masterpiece before his death, which ultimately saves the life of a young and depressed girl in the neighborhood named Johnsy.

Raincoat from The Gift of Magi by O. Henry: Probably the most popular one among O. Henry's short stories; The Gift of Magi was presented by the late master filmmaker from Bengal Rituparno Ghosh through his first hindi movie Raincoat, starring Ajay Devgn and Aishwarya Rai. Unlike the original story though here we see a separated couple who vainly hide the miseries of their present life when they come across each other after many years. In the original story, on a Christmas eve we come across a couple; James and Della Dillingham. James sells his wrist watch to gift his wife an assortment of combs, while she sells off her gorgeous hair at a barber shop and buys a new belt for his watch. A similar sort of ending we see in Raincoat as well, that leaves us with moist eyes and a smile on our face.

Star(Bombay Talkies) from Patol Babu by Satyajit Ray: Bombay Talkies was a celebration of 100 years of Indian cinema where each one of the 4 filmmakers were given a budget of Rs 1 crore for their shorts. The second one named Star directed by Dibakar Banerjee was an adaptation of Satyajit Ray's short story titled Patol Babu, a tale of a failed actor who gets a small break after several years to showcase his talent. Dibakar Banerjee used several innovative ideas in his screenplay including a pet ostrich and a superb conversational scene between the protagonist played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui and the ghost of his father played by the late Sadashiv Amrapurkar, one can interpret both the characters were inspired from Patol Babu. Interestingly enough, this year's oscar winning movie Birdman also had a very similar story-line.

Ek Thi Daayan from Mobius Trips by Mukul Sharma: Gurgaon based journalist Mukul Sharma's short story Mobius Trips became famous only after the revelation that it was the foundation of the movie Ek Thi Daayan. It was written way back in the 1980s and out of nowehere was picked up by filmmaker Vishal Bharadwaj, who then contacted the writer and then they came up with a novella based on a thorough research and from that wrote the screenplay for the Emraan Hashmi starrer. A story in itself, a reason good enough to let out your creative works on the blogs.

Saat Khoon Maaf from Susanna's Seven Husbands by Ruskin Bond: Vishal Bharadwaj is one Indian filmmaker who has always had the urge to convert literature into cinema and though this one was probably his weakest work, one cannot ignore the effort he put in to assemble such a varied cast and come up with something really bold and improvised. Saat Khoon Maaf definitely created a lot of buzz after it was revealed Priyanka Chopra would be playing wife to seven men in the film; including the likes of Neil Nitin Mukesh, John Abraham and Irrfan Khan. Vishal Bharadwaj had plenty of his own inputs as well, including the inclusion of Inspector Keemat Lal played by Annu Kapoor as one of her husbands, who is not a part of the original story but is there in many of Ruskin Bond's other literary works, the character was a tribute by Bharadwaj to Bond who had earlier adapted his novel, The Blue Umbrella as well.

Saawariya from White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky: Sanjay Leela Bhasali's movies are rich in terms of visuals and music and Saawariya was a total winner in this regard. However Ranbir Kapoor and Sonam Kapoor's debut was a failure at the box office being unable to compete with Shah Rukh Khan's Om Shanti Om which also released on the same day. Fyodor Dostoevsky's White Nights has been adapted by several filmmakers in the past. Its a first person narration of a rugged boy who falls in love with an unknown girl and then loses her to her returning old lover, the uniqueness here was the way it was told from the point of view of the female lead rather than the male lead. Shivam Nair's Ahista Ahista, starring Soha Ali Khan and Abhay Deol was also somewhat based on White Nights.

Shootout at Wadala from Dongri to Dubai by S. Hussain Zaidi: Bombay police's first encounter was told through Shootout at Wadala. Though the credits said it is based on S. Hussain Zaidi's Dongri to Dubai, the movie only took inputs from a couple of chapters in the book which mainly focused on the rise of Dawood Ibrahim. Manya Surve was one of the many gangsters mentioned in there and it actually presented him as much more ruthless than John Abraham looked in the movie. The story of the prequel Shootout at Lokhandwala also covers equal amount of space in Dongri to Dubai revealing more details from the lives of Maya Dolas and Dilip Buwa. The series on sony called Encounter anchored by Manoj Bajpai also premiered with the same story as that of Shootout at Wadala.

- Projwal Deb