India's finest stories are waiting. Why won't Bollywood read?

Why is Bollywood not adapting more from India's rich literary canon? This week's Cinematic Saturday explores the gap that continues to exist between books and cinema in Hindi, and how the film industry may be ignoring some of India's greatest tales.

“Kaun kambakht bardaasht karne ko peeta hai?" (What cursed soul drinks to tolerate life?)

When Devdas whispers that line, the glass in his hand is only a prop. What truly engulfs him is longing thick as monsoon air, pride sharp as broken crystal, a love too vast for his own tongue. Long before arc lights burned against his face in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's 2002 version of the film, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay had breathed him onto the page, fragile and furious in equal measure.

Years later, the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Devdas of 2002 didn’t just show a man falling apart. It made a spectacle of it. It wrapped his loneliness in grandeur and turned a self-destructive lover into something epic, almost larger than life.

And you can’t help wondering, without getting overly sentimental about it: How many more characters like Devdas are still gathering dust on our bookshelves, just waiting for someone to bring them to life?

India is not a country short of stories. We are a country built on them. From village realism to urban alienation, from Partition’s open wounds to feminist rebellion, Indian literature has explored every mood this nation has known. Yet, if you look at the average Hindi film line-up of any decade, adaptations from Indian novels are surprisingly few. Sequels thrive. Remakes flourish. Star vehicles arrive with clockwork precision. The great Indian novel, however, remains where it began – on the bookshelf. After all this, Bollywood rues the dearth of good stories to tell.

In Hollywood and the UK, book adaptations form a substantial portion of mainstream releases. Studios treat novels as tested blueprints. A popular book comes with readers who are already emotionally invested, like Wuthering Heights and The Housemaid. It offers narrative structure, layered characters and built-in conversation. Industry research consistently shows that adaptations tend to perform strongly at the global box office.