The Start of Munnabhai Series

Image Courtesy: www.youtube.com

A director par excellence who not only gives blockbusters on Box office but also creates characters that stays for years and generations to come. Munnabhai, Circuit, PK, Chatur, Rancho are just the start of a battalion of characters that will be followed by many, the director would be creating in his future projects. Rajkumar Hirani is just 4 films old and is the most bankable director in the current scenario of Bollywood business. While the audience is waiting for the third installment of Munnabhai series, it is no less than an interesting story of how Rajkumar Hirani conceived Munnabhai MBBS. It started when Hirani was involved into theater in Nagpur with friends from various background specially from medicine. That naturally got him entry into medical college hostel and exposure to their lifestyle. Co-incidentally, in his personal life too he got exposed to doctors and hospitals due to series of illness in his family. All this inspired Hirani to write a story about 3 medical students.  After many drafts, Hirani finally etched a story of a gangster, where the plot begins with the gangster having a very severe headache. He visits a Doctor for medication. In the hospital, he is put through number of checkups and tests – CT Scan, MRI, Blood test, Consultation etc. To his surprise, on waking up the next morning, the headache completely vanishes and that’s when he realizes that it was just a hangover. However, he also realizes the amount of money he has spent and earned by the Doctors in the whole process. He concludes that even Doctor’s make money in a not so correct way, even he does the same but the former earns respect and he doesn’t. This experience triggers his decision to be a doctor and join a medical institute. Here begins his journey on a road to become a Doctor. But to Hirani, his script seemed to be cruel towards Doctors and hence he changed the narrative to suit all sensibilities, and these changes made it to the final print of the film. Munnabhai would’t have been Munnabhai without Sanjay Dutt. Surprisingly, he was not the first choice. Hirani wanted Anil Kapoor to be Munnabhai. It then shifted to Vivek Oberoi. The scale of the film got bigger when Shahrukh Khan was approached. Shahrukh not only showed interest to come on board but also put in a word to Aishwarya to play the role later played by Gracy Singh. But as fate and cinema desired, the role finally landed in the lap of Khalnayak of Bollywood and Sanjay Dutt didn’t leave any stone unturned to be the ultimate Munnabhai. This also started a strong friendship between Dutt and Hirani which is now heading towards a high point with the Director making a biopic on the actor. Rajkumar Hirani did hit a bulls eye with his first film, where ALL was literally WELL.

Source: My First Film by Rajkumar Hirani – Film Companion