It’s not often that I put finger to keyboard and tap out my views about a movie that’s been recently released. I went for SUPER 30 with no expectations and only a sketchy knowledge of what it was about, which I had obtained after reading a review of the film in the Sunday paper.
But by the interval I was surfing the net to read up more on Anand Kumar, on whose life the movie is based. Of course, it’s a highly dramatized; in parts melodramatized version of his life, but that’s Bollywood all over again. We need our heroes to be heroic through and through and the villains to be super-villainous. Also, the hero is Hrithik Roshan and he is as heroic as they come.
The story shows how Anand Kumar, a mathematical genius from an underprivileged background in Patna, struggles to achieve his dreams, fails and then claws his way out of the despair to help youngsters from economically backward families achieve theirs. He does so by selecting 30 such youngsters, housing and feeding them while he prepares them to crack India’s most prestigious entrance exam- IIT-JEE. All this without charging a penny in fees, no donations and no funds.
Needless to say, he faces numerous hurdles and even survives attempts on his life as he navigates his Super 30 through the murky world of the coaching class Mafia, unscrupulous politicians, smug, entitled kids, poverty and hunger.
Also needless to say, heroism and goodness prevail and the underdog wins the day and the battle in a highly dramatic climax. Very stirring,emotional stuff.
By the end I was wondering why on earth all this drama was needed to pad up the story of a real-life hero whose life was so eventful and ‘filmi’ just the way it was. It also made me even more curious about the real Anand Kumar. So naturally I came home and checked out his Wikipedia page to begin with. The page mirrored all that was shown in the film so accurately that it got me thinking about the chicken and the egg. There were other sites that pretty much repeated what the film had shown. I then went to YouTube to look for the documentary that Discovery Channel had made on his life. No luck. There was a talk he’d given on INK Talks (desi version of Ted Talks) but that was just him reading from a paper in strongly accented English about a student of his. I didn’t bother to listen to the end.
Then I came across an interview he’d given to BBC Hindi, a few weeks prior to the release of Super 30. Jackpot! Our hero speaks fluently in a robust ‘Bihari’ accent (A-doo-kay-sann, to quote but one example) which is so much more real than the one Hrithik Roshan tries valiantly to acquire. His accent stays pretty much on track but there are times when it either slips up or is overdone. In short, the effort shows. Not so with Anand Kumar, who is belligerent, earnest, passionately vocal and also slightly boastful about what he is doing. He deftly fields awkward questions (about rigging the system, concealing marks, names and fees) and counters accusations with bravado and also a sense of injury. A quick mention about the interviewer who firmly but pleasantly keeps the conversation on track by not allowing him to bluster his way out of difficult queries. The interview ends with Anand Kumar declaring that he is not concerned about what people accuse him off, his aim in life is to help under-privileged kids crack the IIT-JEE and that’s what he will carry on doing.
Move over, Hrithik Roshan, there’s a real hero in town. He’s not noble, pure and he doesn’t wear a halo of heroic deeds. But he’s real. He exists. And that’s what matters.
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