Ex-investment banker turns to Bollywood script writing

An Indian investment banker turned wildly successful novelist is taking a career turn in Bollywood, with a screenplay he says will tackle social issues in the same vein as the books that made him a youth icon. Chetan Bhagat shot to fame with his coming-of-age tale ‘Five Point Someone’ in 2004 -- written at night while he kept up his financial day job -- which became a huge commercial hit and spawned a raft of Indian campus novels. Another five books and ten years later, 40-year-old Bhagat has dropped the banking career to become a full-time writer and speaker, known for his casual writing style enjoyed by millions of Indians but snubbed by the literati. He said he found the experience less ‘lonely’ than novel-writing -- although the collaborative method of film-making had its challenges. ‘Writing a screenplay is a far more consultative process. When I write a book, I do the story the way I want it,’ Bhagat told AFP in an interview, according to AFP.