Vikas Swarup’s book Q&A was fairly unknown to readers, till one fine day, Danny Boyle decided to pick it up, make a movie out of it, and then took it to the Oscars. Suddenly, everyone wanted to read the book that had inspired Slumdog Millionaire, India’s best shot at the Academy Awards so far. New prints of the book started appearing in bookstores, the author was giving interviews, and the book was actually renamed Slumdog Millionaire.

   While 80 percent of movies made in Hollywood are adaptations of books- be it fantasy-themed books like J.K.Rowling’s Harry Potter series, which recently released the last of its movies in the franchise, J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series, The Chronicles of Narnia books, Twilight, or chick-list like the Bridget Jones Diary movies, Girl Interrupted, horror flicks like ‘The Shining’, or even the critically acclaimed ones like ‘The English Patient’, To....