The moment I saw the scene where the "about to commit suicide", shattered beyond repair Joy (how inappropriate his name had become) lets his heart loose and sings "give me some sunshine, give me some rain.", I realized that this is not going to be another of those movies which I would forget in a day or two.As an integral part of the herd(yup, it is a mindless herd) my connection to the story was instant.
Raju Hirani and Vidhu Vinod Chopra have done it again. First it was about compassion which has gone all but missing in a profession which so desperately needs it, then it was about paying tribute to a person about whom Einstein once said that future generations would cease to believe that such a man ever existed(and I think he was spot on about this just like many of his celebrated discoveries about Physics) and show the world that his methods are still somehow relevant and now this one.
All these years when intellectuals and bureaucrats have kept on debating endlessly on what might be an alternative to the existing system which as we all know is more about the grades and percentages and encourages this cut throat world where parents and teachers push the hapless kid to the limit and sometimes tragically beyond it.If the child is actually interested in what he is studying he might end up learning something along the way but isn’t that more of an exception.How many of you remember who fought in the battles of Panipat, what is an easterly wind, the carbon structure of methane or the exact definition(ya man I am talking about the one that would yield marks in the exam, not some layman description) of a cantilever.If you can actually answer any of these above questions(without the friendly assistant named Google), pat yourselves on the back and think of yourselves as survivors.
Coming back to the makers of this movie they have(as I said earlier) done it again, addressed a very relevant issue and entertained the audience thoroughly along the way.Kudos to them.Be it the funny reaction of Rancho when a parent laments about the decline of his kid’s grades(from 94% to 91%) as if there is no future left for him anymore, or the portrayal of the biggest victim of them all(no it’s not the people who end their lives in frustration), the character of Chatur (these despicable creatures were named topper in my college) who will do anything and absolutely anything to take the trophy in the rat-race.
There are more lough out loud moments than you can count in one hand and once you leave the theatres you would probably struggle to pick the best of them.Be it the effects of the magical ctrl+H, or the true to heart definition of how an induction motor starts or probably the best anti-ragging ploy used ever(How much I would have loved to do this to the retards in my college), or even using a dead person’s ashes as an effective tool for black mailing.
Aamir Khan although hardly looks like a student, still fits into the character quite well.Sharman Joshi and Madhavan have made the most of what the scipt offered them especially Sharman.Kareena is cosmetic as usual.But the actor who takes the cake is undoubtedly Boman Irani closely followed by the new face who plays Chatur, the silencer. Shantanu Moitra’s "easy on the mind" music and Swanand Kirkire’s thoughtful and sometimes wacky lyrics (as in All Izz well) are memorable to say the least.
As an engineering grad myself I could identify with many things in this myself(the one exception being Sharmaan’s interview) and hence the time spent watching it was also a simultaneous trip down the memory lane.If Rancho, Rehan and Raju are actually idiots I wish the world had more of that species.