Educationist and environmentalist Sonam Wangchuk has taken a dig at Aamir Khan following the actor’s claims that his iconic 3 Idiots character Phunsuk Wangdu was not based on him.
The exchange came after co-star Omi Vaidya’s social post asserting that Wangdu was indeed inspired by Wangchuk, a claim subsequently dismissed by Aamir as wrong.
Addressing Aamir’s denial at an appearance on a podcast, Wangchuk quipped the actor might be suffering from a short-term memory loss after their interaction.
“In the videos that resurfaced, he was watching my speech in his Ghajini outfit. Maybe because he was in that outfit, he experienced short-term memory loss and forgot our meeting after 15 minutes. So, I’m not surprised.”
Clarifying that the interaction was not just a snappy one, Wangchuk described it as a detailed meeting. He added, “They say he gets deeply immersed in his characters. Perhaps he was too immersed in his Ghajini persona when he watched me receive an award at an event we both attended. Otherwise, we discussed a lot of ideas.”
“That’s what we call an influence or an inspiration, right? Maybe he shared those ideas with his writers, who then modified the existing script. Perhaps he did it subconsciously, or the writers were unaware of where the ideas originated. Either way, I have no issue with it, he further said.”
In the 2009 blockbuster Three Idiots, Aamir Khan portrayed Phunsuk Wangdu, a renowned educator and innovator from Ladakh, whose true identity was revealed until the film’s climax.
For most of the narrative, he happens to go by the pseudonym Rancho, who completes the engineering degree in the place of his father’s employer’s son.
The movie is written and directed by Rajkumar Hirani and produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra. The film also stars Kareena Kapoor, R. Madhavan, Sharman Joshi, and Boman Irani and Mona Singh in pivotal roles.
In an event following the protests by the CJP where Sonam Wangchuk actively participated, Aamir Khan denied to a question that 3 Idiots was inspired by Sonam Wangchuk.
He said, No, that is not true actually. That is a misconception. I didn’t know about Mr Sonam at that time when we were doing the film, 3 Idiots. I saw a video of Chatur just recently, and he said that. But he is wrong. Maybe that is what Chatur was thinking, but I want to tell you that neither Raju nor Abhijat (Rajkumar Hirani or Abhijat Joshi), who are the two writers, we didn’t know about Mr Sonam. However, what Mr Sonam is doing is good work in any case. He doesn’t have to be based on a character of 3 idiots for us to respect him and the work that he does. I wanted to share this from a factual point of view”.