A couple of decades later, well after he might have hung his boots, Raju Hirani’s filmography could well be defined by cinema historians in a single phrase – Movies with a heart. His two Munnabhai ventures and the latest ‘idiotic’ expression (you could very easily call it Munnabhai 3 for that matter) are less about love, friendship and relationships and more about listening and following that instinctive beat on the left side of your ribcage. I must admit I was a bit of a skeptic when I saw the first Munnabhai movie. I sensed that Hirani hit the right issues but showed too mushy and melodramatic a way out. I guess it was just a bit of my realistic cynicism that initially rejected the ‘jadoo ki jhappi’. I saw Munnabhai MBBS thrice before turning around partially. By the time I saw Raju Hirani’s take on Gandhigiri (going to the movie alone with the parents away on a break from me) I was a convert. Through the movie, I was amazed at the refreshing take that Hirani brought on Gandhi, an individual I greatly admired but cynically (again) believed had moved too far away in history for India to reclaim him on anything other than currency notes. With his third flick, Hirani touches upon a topic that has been covered briefly before – Bollywood’s angst ridden unemployed hero of the 80s finding no use for his graduation degree, Munnabhai himself deriding medical education that treated real patients as lab guinea pigs and Aamir Khan’s own recent directorial debut that focused on the mad desire of the parents of school going kids to see them topping their classes.

3 Idiots goes a bit further and takes on the foundations on which our higher education and dare I say much of our endeavors post that rest. Before I make another critical comment on the same a disclaimer may be in order. I am very much myself a part of that system. I have been through my share of Board exam criticality talks, my mother taking a break from work during the exams themselves to ensure my three meals a day and remaining nutrition wasn’t affected during the lead up to the papers, my father silently enquiring about my preparations and then my evaluation of the performance during both the Boards and my CA exams. I have run around coaching institutes during my CA days, borrowed and copied notes, learned a lot of mumbo-jumbo by rote (forgotten almost all of it by now) and primed myself by pasting a planner with exam days and key preparation milestones on my room wall next to the study table. I might not agree with what our manner of learning produces but I must be fair enough to attribute my current position (whether good or bad) to it.

I was reminded of the same during a conversation with a couple of colleagues and my boss on a wet summer night in New Jersey about five months ago. On a dinner table populated by Engineers + MBAs and a lone B.Com + CA, I was the only one arguing against the rat race that our kids enter into high school onwards and how engineering colleges and professional degrees often are seen symbols of societal validation to be attained rather than merely as routes of academic knowledge occurring on a journey aroused by interest and liking. I wouldn’t want my kid to go through an engineering college if I could help it, I remember saying that night. Obviously it didn’t go down too well with the engineers present. It was then that my boss reminded me that it was no use if you thumbed the rat race but still remained a turtle in life. You may not like it Aftab Khanna he told me, but you are here sitting here in America because you worked hard and came out the same competitive professional system that you now very happily curse.

Yes, America…the ultimate symbol of your having arrived in your career. Remember our mothers telling us during those high school and college days about so and so’s son going to the US, sponsored by his ‘kampany’. I must confess I was lost for an answer on that dinner table at the end of the argument, wondering if I was failing to see the greys in the jigsaw and making the same mistake of thinking in a linear fashion, albeit in the opposite direction, as I shunned everything about our higher education. It was only later that night that my tubelight hit a fuse in the brain and I thought – Heck, I could have done anything other than CA, excelled at it and perhaps still landed in the US by the time I was 26. So much for an American visa!

Which is what Hirani tries to communicate with his Idiots. Its presented quite simply through the contrast between the rote learning, spectacled bookworm and easy going protagonist who can find simple solutions to everyday problems by being able to ‘apply’ his knowledge beyond the books. Its a movie without many layers and in a straightforward way it critiques the mad rush of the educated young of the Indian middle class towards societal validation masquerading as ‘success’; a message captured in a single line that a father says to his son when presented with an alternative career decision, ‘Guptaji kya kahenge?’. Hirani makes a call to listen to the heart and go after ‘excellence’ (a fluid, hard to define word) rather than marks and easy acceptable choices. It is a movie as much about self-discovery as about summoning the will to stand for your choices.

But it is the movie’s critique about the assembly line of GPA, marks, ranks and job chasing professionals that shall arouse the most questions, especially if, like me, you are very much a product of that system. Is success measured by the size of that pay cheque, the suburban apartment or house and that big luxury car outside that house? In an India increasingly experience an upward mobility of a huge mass of its people, it’s a question worth putting forward. In a debate where, over the last two decades, we had chosen Amitabh Bachchan’s ‘bangla, gaadi and bank balance’ over Shashi Kapoor’s just ‘Maa’, Hirani and Shimit Amin’s Rocket Singh that came out a couple of weeks ago, make a pitch for a middle ground for morally driven achievement driven by passion rather than naked hunger of wealth and ‘success’.

I remember my school principle, a lady whom I deeply respect and admire for the simplicity and clarity of her thoughts remarking repeatedly that the there was only slot at the top and it was tougher to stay there than getting there – a remark I heard every time she saw the ‘Ist’ rank on my report card. I was a bit apprehensive to be open about it then, but I silently disagreed with her. Over the years I have seen enough people make good in life who had been written off in school examinations. A close friend who flunked a class X subject and then gave ‘compartment’ exams a few months later with borrowed notes is a young confident lawyer receiving global offers. A cousin written off by many in the family as hopeless was just waiting to be thrown into the big bad world on his own away from us cynics to chart a course that has literally taken him places. The best Chartered Accountant I worked with during my three years with a global accounting firm was someone who missed figuring in our Institute’s merit list by half a dozen marks and who at an age of 28 can easily teach a thing or two to many senior partners of the firm. There might not be certificates to prove examinational excellence for these people, but in their own right they have found a measure of success, all because somewhere they perhaps found a calling. Yes, it’s tough being at the top and you can’t survive in a competitive world by just standing and not moving your hands. But surely, our children can be allowed to chose their battles, be given the freedom to explore fields to compete. That I guess is Raju Hirani’s message for many of us wondering where we have landed up and where we are headed (a mid life crisis possibly?). Perhaps its not worth chasing what we are running after. Perhaps the chase lies on a road we locked years ago in a corner of the study table.

Almost a decade ago, inspired by the many armymen in the family and flush with seeing images of the Kargil war I had developed a slight interest in the Services as a career option. In a pre-internet age, I remember responding to an Army newspaper advertisement that carried a small chit that you could mail back to Army HQ for a detailed brochure. My mother saw me sending the mail, was not too enthused but didn’t say anything openly. My father, who had been used to hearing his son announcing that he wanted to be CA (or a journo) for a few years now, didn’t respond initially. A few days later, on a car ride, he softly brought up the subject of my letter. I don’t mind your joining the forces, I remember him telling me, but make sure that you do it with a full heart. I want you to excel in what you eventually do, he told me,…I want you to aim for being the best amongst those around you and you would easily reach the top. He would have liked Raju Hirani’s 3 Idiots I think. Much like Raju’s heroes, he was a man with a big heart.

P.S. – Quite liked Kareena Kapoor for once btw. Cute like someone I know... ;)

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If you ever needed evidence that the institution of ragging needed strict regulation, then ladies and gents you have it right here before you. A young boy, a year out of school, with dreams and aspirations in his eyes, yet to come of age and discover the cynicisms of this world has paid the price with his life for upholding the grand legacy of this so called annual tradition in our colleges. This sadly is what ragging has come down to in our ‘professional’ institutions; what kind of members such institutions shall contribute to their professions is a question to ponder over. Doctors/ Engineers/ Lawyers who would not think twice before banging someone’s head mercilessly into a concrete wall. People who see nothing wrong in subjecting those junior to them (in age, perhaps not in mind) to the worst of psychological humiliations and physical abuse. People who are able to conjure up strange notions of power within their fiefdoms of college hostels and exercise that power brutally. People who get away every year with the tacit approval and lack of action by the institutions they supposedly claim to study in. Welcome to the grand tradition of college ragging, under the guise of which we have been passing off abuse and harassment – and now murder.

The Supreme Court came out with its anti-ragging guidelines in 2001 – the very year that I entered college. At that time I remember it sparked of a debate in the college circuits. Delhi University students were bristling with self righteousness and proclaiming how ragging was an ice breaking institution that was high on the fun quotient and necessary to initiate their ‘fucchas’ and foster camaraderie between the freshmen and varsity. Of course, they had a point. On the very first day of college that year, Hindustan Times photographed five varsity students of Hindu College making three freshmen to go on haunches, put their hands to their ears and become what our schoolteachers used to say in an age long gone by, ‘murgaas’. That photograph, of five laughing seniors and three bended juniors made the front page of the newspaper the next day and all around my class there was one sentiment – how idiotic! Couldn’t those fools see that they were being photographed? (The seniors in the snap were temporarily suspended)

Every year our colleges put up notices ‘advising’ students against ragging. Every year stories come out. There are the first set of stories – the polite ones, the tellers of which will come up and claim what a wonderful tradition ragging is. Stories of vulgar songs being asked to be sung, stories of sexually driven young boys who have had limited interactions with the other sex asking their juniors to ‘go and propose to that girl’. These are stories whose veil you would never care to lift. You would smile, pass them on as signs of coming of age, ignore the signals and turn a blind eye.

And then there is the other set. The one that flows out of our medical and engineering colleges. Ask any student who has passed out of such an institution and you would know where I am coming from. I have heard tales of people being asked to strip, humiliated because they belonged to a particular caste, being told in the middle of the night to fetch liquor from outside for their seniors, people being slapped, caned, pulled by their hair and beaten up and girls being asked to dance nude. Now I know I sound a bit of an idealist on this blog at times, but please pray tell me in what civilized world does all the above count as steps of ‘initiation and building of espirit de corps’? And if indeed such acts are vital to break down walls of inhibitions that juniors possess when they enter college, then why don’t the same rules apply when our kids enter kindergarten or high school, when recruits enter the army or when we join a job after getting out of our colleges? My question is quite simple - would you accept your workplace tolerating your boss slapping and stripping you and pulling your hair? Would you laugh off lightly if tomorrow your kid’s head is smashed into the school wall when he enters kindergarten?

I can see where the strength and reasoning for ragging is derived. Colleges are places without codified rules of behavior. There are no codes of conduct, no uniforms and no class teacher to make you behave. It is a place for losing your innocence, for venturing into the big bad world after coming out of the protecting environs of your home. Young kids, specially in hostels, come across a diversity that they perhaps have not seen before in their lives. There is a sense of community and belongingness, driven by the feeling of everyone being far away from home. The hostel is your home. Your mates your brothers. A sense of authority prevails over those who enter the premises under you. A culture of patronage and protection – all under the garb of fostering ties and interaction. There is a sense of power hitherto unknown. Combine that power with regional and caste biases, a thrill at the ‘adventure’ on offer, a closeted sexuality demanding exploration and a knowledge that you are ‘one in a mob’, that ‘everyone does it, so why shouldn’t you?’ What do you get? Lifelong friendships – maybe. Camaraderie – maybe. Murder? Ah well, that’s just an unfortunate byproduct. So what if some people are abused and their heads smashed? We must have our dose of the cocktail of power.

The only explanation of ragging that anyone could offer me was – ‘Because I also got ragged’. Every batch claims it was more progressive than its seniors and that they ‘didn’t rag as much as they had suffered’.

The colleges, of course, can only shrug their shoulders every time an incident happens. In the recent case, the principal accused was a repeat offender – yet hadn’t been reprimanded even once. Institutions won’t act due to influence, fear of negative publicity and police scrutiny. The students won’t complain because they have to spend their academic life with those who harass them. They will simply bear the pain and insults and smile on gamely. And this ‘grand tradition’ of crass display of power derived from coercion will continue to roll along unabated.

Well, I am afraid but as the recent incident demonstrates this is a matter where we have exhausted all limits of self regulation. Unfortunately, Indian courts, police and the executive will now be called to enter into our colleges – not to frame educational policies and reform the functioning, not to demand an increase in budgetary allocations, not to call for improvement of infrastructure, but to police the students. And that, if you have passed out of a college in this country, along with the death of Aman Kachru, is a matter of utter collective shame.

 

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