Ashutosh Gowariker’s movie on romance and marriage revolves around a NRI boy who has come to India in order to get married within a week. To meet his urgent requirement he decides to see 12 different girls representing each Zodiac sign in the few days he has got. Harman Baweja plays the role of a desperate NRI boy and Priyanka Chopra convincingly plays all the 12 girls by herself.
Whereas the movie is said to be based on a novel by Madhu Rye, the theme also has huge similarities with a late eighties T.V. Serial made by Ketan Mehta in 1989 with the title “Mr. Yogi”. In that highly popular serial too there is a NRI person played by Late Mohan Gokhale, who wants to get married to an Indian girl. For this he shortlists 12 different girls and then meets a new lady in each fresh episode of the 13 week serial. It also had the veteran actor Om Puri playing the Sutradhar (narrator) of the story in a comic style.
Interestingly the serial was also based on a Gujrati play where in the lead character was called Mr. Yogesh Ishwarlal Patel aka Y. I. Patel or Mr. Yogi. And in “What’s Your Raashee” too, Harman Baweja has the same name as Mr. Yogesh.
May be both the movie and the serial are based on the same novel or story, but it’s not mentioned anywhere in details about the same.
As contributed by our avid reader, Mr. Jayesh Adhyaru.
(In his response to this post)
Both “Mr. Yogi” and “What’s Your Raashee” is based on the same novel by eminent Gujarati writer Mr. Madhu Rye named 'Kimble Ravenswood'. The Gujarati novel was translated into English to prepare a complete script for the movie.
In the late eighties, Mr. Ketan Mehta wanted to use the name of the lead character 'Y. I Patel' as 'Why I Patel', so he changed it from 'Yogesh Shankarlal Patel' (which was in original novel) to 'Yogesh Ishwarlal Patel' in Mr. Yogi.
The original novel also has a character of Yogesh's American girlfriend named 'Peggy' which is not in the movie WYR. Incidentally, you can read the writer's name as 'Dr. Madhusudan Thakar' on the book 'What's Your Raashee' read by Harman Baweja in the movie. "Madhusudan Thakar" is the original name of Madhu Rye, but he has not written any book on astrology and is not an astrologer either.
(Thanks Jayesh for your valuable contribution)
