Shah Rukh Khan and his latest offering ‘Fan’ have impressed critics and audiences alike. The film has once again proved that given a good role, our favourite superstar can completely own the character and leave a lasting impression. His act as the obsessive loyal fan Gaurav got people to hate and love him at the same time.
While the film continues to run in theaters, almost three weeks after it was released, it has also been accused of being inspired from Robert DeNiro starrer ‘The Fan’. Director and co-writer of the film Maneesh Sharma, of course, has denied it to be a copy of any film.
Interestingly, a Bengali website now claims that the second half of ‘Fan’ is copied from a short story written by none other than Satyajit Ray back in 1976. Part of Ray’s popular ‘Professor Shonku’ series- the said short story had featured for the first time in a popular Bengali magazine ‘Anandamela’ in 1976. Titled ‘Shonkur Shani’r Dasha’ the story was about Professor Shonku being almost ostracized from world scientist forum for his misconduct at a science convention in Innsburck, a place that the Professor claims he has never visited.
The story then reveals how a jealous and competent fellow scientist creates an robot, which looks exactly like Shonku to carry out nefarious activities to ruin Shonku’s successful career.
Much like ‘FAN’, where Aryan Khanna the superstar decides to take matter in his own hands to deal with Gaurav, who by then, being his look alike has created enough damage to his image, Shonku himself decides to go to Innsburck in Austria to find out who his impersonator is.
It could be sheer coincidence that the crux of two stories are so eerily similar but the similarities in both the stories and how the lead protagonist goes around proving his innocence is uncanny.
Few years back, Radio Mirchi, Kolkata had run a series called ‘Sunday Suspense’ which featured ‘Shonkur Shani’r Dasha’ in one of the episodes. Those who can understand Bengali, can hear the story here.
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