Half Madman is a story about the world of showbiz. It depicts one of India's many film industries but is never named so that the readers can themselves fill in the blanks. I briefly ventured into it a few years ago and all it took was one rejection to scar me for a long time.

A short film I made wasn't given the desired treatment at a film festival and I was left heartbroken. I still kept making these so-called "films", hoping to gain the desired attention one day. What actually happened was me losing interest in making movies instead upon realizing I really had no audience. However, the art of filmmaking is too hard to resist, and I decided to stick to documentaries and other stuff which doesn't fall in the category of fiction because I think I'm not meant to direct it anymore.

But my love for storytelling found a new direction when I decided to write books instead.

Half Madman is dedicated to every artist who has original stories and talent but doesn't get the desired attention or respect. This is a completely fictional story I wrote after combining concepts I have come up with for multiple separate stories. Merging them into one was how Half Madman was born.

I hope this story book has something for everyone. Lastly, thanks a lot for reading this copy. It means a lot to me.

- Achyut Prashast Singh, the author

Chapter 1

Tarun Rana aims to become a renowned film actor, but is often neglected and berated at auditions. He still keeps auditioning as much as he can in vain. One day, he decides to make a short film with his own camera. Tarun, however, plans to audition a few more times before leaving the city as he doesn't intend to take odd jobs in order to fund his stay. At times, he considers going back and studying once again in order to pass the exams he failed due to his lack of interest in what he thought was "boring".

One day, a popular film director named Ankit spots him in the short film and decides to cast him as the lead in his new film. He meets Tarun at a construction site and offers him the role, which he gladly aecepts. The film is shot within 28 days and released two months later. It opens to low numbers but eventually finds praise and manages to set the cash registers ringing. Being an action-thriller, it launches Tarun as an action star and cements his status as the next big icon. He finds it unbelievable at first, but ultimately gets used to it and thanks Ankit in an awards ceremony where he wins the best actor award.

Tarun begins to get new projects, but declines the offers to work in remakes. He wishes to honor his audience by treating them to original scripts. However, months later, he learns his debut film was based on three different foreign films, i.e, plagiarized. He is unable to believe this claim at first but based on the research by a social media user, he watches those films and is left stunned. He begins to hate his own debut film. He feels he was not only inferior to the original actors but was also betrayed and tricked into working on a rip-off. The production companies of the original films begin to close in on the director, the producers and him as well. This leads to a lot of hate comments on social media aimed at everyone involved in the making of the film. Tarun is enraged and later surprised when Ankit admits he plagiarized because that's what everyone other than Tarun wanted. The producers wanted to make more money and there was a lot of hard work done in order to find films which could not be traced for months and thereby ensured a decent theatrical run.

Ankit further reveals he had done this in the past before and the lack of internet was one major reason many viewers, if not all, were unable to realize those films were copied. However, he does admit he knew he was stealing someone else's work due to which he couldn't dare to mention the writing credits explicitly in the promotional material. Tarun begins to see the film as a blot on his career and reputation. The foreign production companies file a lawsuit against his film's production company, and willing to fix the damage done, Tarun comes up with an offer that shocks everyone.

He announces an official hybrid remake of the three films and promises to compensate for the losses with the film's earnings. The companies agree to this and decide to cooperate with him while Ankit, who used to copy films without any fear, begins to feel the heat for the first time in 20 years.