Madhavan & Chetan Bhagat spar on social media, is it for real?

What appeared to be a public spat by actor R Madhavan and popular fiction writer Chetan Bhagat on Twitter, turned out to be promotional run for their recently premiered Netflix series Decoupled. The series, which is pegged on the shenanigans of an affluent couple on the brink of a divorce, has Madhavan essaying a best-selling author but second to popular writer Chetan Bhagat who appears in a cameo as himself in the comedy.

In the eight-episode series, Chetan Bhagat keeps popping up like a bad penny in the eyes of Madhavan’s character, and both try to outwit each other. They are clearly rivals and both will go to any extent to show the other in a bad light.

A few days after Decoupled started streaming, the war of words between Madhavan and Chetan flagged off online when the actor remarked that the film 3 Idiots, in which he had played a key role, was better than the author’s book Five Point Someone, on which the film was based.

3 Idiots, a Rajkumar Hirani outing, was released in 2009, and mocked the mindless craze for engineering courses and the way engineering colleges function. It was based on Bhagat’s book Five Point Someone which focusses on the lives of three boys in IIT, who find it tough to cope in the educational institution. 3 Idiots, which starred Aamir Khan and Sharman Joshi along with Madhavan, was a big box office hit and won three National Film Awards including Best Popular Film.

In this social media game of book vs film, Madhavan tweeted that he is biased towards films. “Hey Chetan… My bias is movies > books,” he wrote. The author came back with a swift retort asking whether he ever heard anyone ever say the movie is better than the book? This dialogue between them went on as they took digs at each other. All in a spirit of fun, of course, as we learnt later.

Then Madhavan asked him if he liked books so much, why was he in Decoupled? To which Chetan Bhagat replied that this was an “unsubtle plug” but he preferred a Pulitzer over a pan masala branded award show. Even as fans were wondering if they were ribbing each other or was this for real, Madhavan stepped in to admit that the entire exchange was scripted. “Chetan Bhagat is my bro. We are just doing the publicity drill,” he said.

While Chetan also replied to the actor’s tweet and wrote, “Love you bro.” And, Twitter fans were left entertained by this publicity gimmick.