12 February,2024 06:17 AM IST | Mumbai | Mohar Basu
Varun Grover
Two weeks ago, a suicide note by a Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) aspirant went viral online. It was the second suicide in a month in Kota, which is known for its coaching institutes that train students for engineering entrance exams. Incidentally, the next week, the trailer of All India Rank, which marks writer-lyricist-comic Varun Grover's directorial debut, dropped online. When we sit down with Grover, our conversation naturally begins with the pressure that our education system thrusts on 17-year-olds. Imagine a world where a little girl feels it's easier to kill herself than go through with the JEE prep? He says, "Kids feeling pushed to harm themselves is a symptom of a much deeper issue.The whole idea that someone who is not even 18 has only two years to decide what they want to be in their lives and if they don't they will be stuck in a tunnel that they are making through a mountain. That mindset has been there since forever. This pressure is created by a whole system. The parents, peers, teachers at school. There is a success industry validated by reports like IIT-ian getting into Google and making a salary of 1 crores. These success stories are actually triggers for other kids because it tells them either be this or be a nobody. This push to be successful in life at 16 is too much when you've just hit puberty and you are still figuring out your body, feelings, surroundings. When you mention that you want to study history or arts, you are seen as a lesser mortal."
The film talks about the sense of middle class mediocrity but for Grover it was an act that took him close to personal closure. "There is a false sense of being persecuted and JEE is seen as a gateway to stepping up and going to the next level. You'll be counted in a whole different bracket of success is what the film lays out for you. For me, what's very personal for me in the film is to try to make sense of who I am, very I come from, people in my locality in Lucknow. I wanted to reconnect with the 16 year old self. I loved physics and science but I didn't understand why it had to be monetised to become something. I wanted to be a writer and growing up in Lucknow, I couldn't have imagined it could be an actual profession for me. I had brushed off hopes of being a writer and as an option worth struggling for. Trying to become an IIT-ian sucked the joy of physics from within me. The confusion of that age is what I channeled into the film. I am stuck in that age emotionally and I am looking for closure. The recurring dreams I have are from that age; of being in that house in Lucknow, in my neighbourhood. I think I am also trying to understand how my life played out the way it did."
AIR in some ways is an exact antithesis of 12th Fail by Vidhu Vinod Chopra that emerged as a surprise hit last year. Grover admits he was wary of the fact that he has ended up making a poorer version of the same story until he watched the trailer of that movie. " When the Restart song dropped, we were doing festival rounds. No one knew what the film was about. Imagine how stressed I was thinking Vidhu Vinod Chopra had made a movie on the same subject. Until the trailer came out, I was worried. It was an inspirational tale and my film is a counterpoint of the same idea. I was relieved. I loved 12th fail as a movie. But 12th Fail is celebratory and feeds into the hysteria of success. 12th Fail was a specific real life story about a man who had to succeed; he didn't have a back up option. Like in America, there's a great American dream - a house, car, two kids, neighbourhood all are the metrics of success. In India you are telling a 16 year old to determine their dream. Our education system, families, societal expectations, government approach, educational policies all need to collectively be reassessed."
One of the primary worries of AIR could be its similarity to the Kota Factory. Was he worried about comparisons? "I am glad my film isn't similar to the Kota factory either. I made my ADs watch that show. That show is about coaching which too is a symptom of a larger problem. I thought if AIR has too many parallels with that series, it is pointless to attempt this movie. Every single one of my ADs thought AIR is a different story entirely. One thing I was recommended to change was to reduce the element of coaching as a culprit. The internal politics of coaching and how students are poached which was a small track - we completely let that go. It was already sparsely added but we reduced it to zero. The film stays with the protagonist and is a story of what his surroundings do to him."
