Barring a Shah Rukh Khan, an Akshay Kumar or a Preity Zinta, it is near impossible for most Indians to break into Bollywood's exclusive club of star children. Hearteningly, it is still possible for Indians born in middle class homes to become star technicians like 3 Idiots director Rajkumar Hirani.
Patcy N and photographer N V Reuben traveled to Raju Hirani's home town Nagpur last week to discover how his journey to directorial superstardom began.
Suresh Hirani, Rajkumar Hirani's father, is a refugee from that great sub-continental tragedy called Partition. When Suresh arrived in India with his mother, two brothers and five sisters, he was just 14.
His father and eldest brother had passed away, so it was up to Suresh to support his large family. He took up work in a bangle factory in Firozabad, Uttar Pradesh, and later moved to Nagpur where he set up a typing institute with just two typewriters.
His business flourished and soon he had about 1,000 students, with 16 batches a day.
The advent of computers eventually forced the institute to shut down in 2000.
Suresh did not ask his son to join his business even though Raju proved to be a good salesman, once selling 40 typewriters in 40 days when his parents were on vacation.
When he learnt that Raju was interested in cinema -- he wanted to become an actor, not a director, mind you -- Suresh got his son's photographs shot and packed him off to an acting school in Mumbai. But Raju could not blend in and returned to Nagpur after three days.
His supportive father then asked Raju to apply to the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune, where actors from Jaya Bhaduri and Shatrughan Sinha to Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah, and directors from Adoor Gopalakrishnan to Subhash Ghai learnt their craft.
The acting course had shut down by then and chances of admission to the directorial course looked slim as there were way too many applicants. So Raju opted for the editing course. He earned a scholarship, thereby reducing the load on his father's financially burdened shoulders. His parents proudly point out that Raju never asked then for money when he was at the FTII.
"Raju was always an introvert, just like me," says his mother Sheela Hirani, a retired schoolteacher. "He never harassed me or asked me for money. And I never gave any pocket money till my children grew up."
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