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I owe it all to Manoj Kumar. Or, letting my ‘andar ka literary janwar’ loose, I should say “I came out of Manoj Kumar’s overcoat” (apologies to Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev or any other Russian author who actually quoted the above and also tormented my childhood).

As I stepped into my teens, the male equivalent of baali umar, I realized the purpose of my existence. It was to watch all movies released in the one-theatre town that I lived then. While I was pursuing this with a zeal bordering on the one displayed by Jagdish Raj while pursuing Amitabh in Don, and clocking a healthy 4 movies a week (2 at the theatre and 2 on Doordarshan), I was one day reprimanded by an avuncular misanthrope – “What do you learn from all these movies? You will end up as a clerk.”

This roused me like nothing had ever before or since. I had seen Manoj Kumar’s Clerk a year earlier. And I knew it was not something I wanted to become. Ever. Imagine the song “Main Ek Clerk Hoon” becoming the song of your life. Those of you who haven’t seen Clerk might be wondering how profound an impact can a movie make? Well, I can tell you, Clerk changed lives of people (as shown above). And that can’t be said of a whole lot of movies that are written about on this site. So, if I were you (which is tough but we’re speaking hypothetically here), I would dump all this Juno, Gone Baby Gone, Lives of Others business and spend time searching for the Clerk DVD. It will change your life, trust Manoj Kumar on that.

Anyway, this isn’t about Clerk. I am saving that for my book. Why give it away free, when I can earn from it being my life’s abiding motto. This post is about the first part of that dire warning that was handed to me – “What do you learn from all these movies?” And, after many years of serious education, I can say it on the ‘chot of a danka’ that all that’s important to learn in life, I have learnt from Hindi movies. Shocked!! I know the more excitable among you might have jumped out of your bed like Ashok Kumar (as Manoj Kumar’s freedom fighter dad) in Clerk, who did the same, albeit, from his deathbed, when Manoj Kumar, in an inspirational ploy, played ‘Qadam qadam badhaye jaa’ as quick-fix solution to an imminent cardiac arrest. Please pick yourself up, go back to the bed and let me gently explain how. This, however, can’t be a single post material. Remember, I am trying to distil a lifetime’s worth of education here. So, in addition to my Wheel of Time Series (referenced here, here and here), we will also have the “Lessons Learnt” series from here on.

This post will feature 3 crucial lessons that I learnt early on in life which helped me surge ahead in the rat race that I got mixed up with later. May be you were not that lucky and didn’t get to watch these movies at the opportune time in your life (which is why you are reading this than doing something constructive like demonstrating against Jodhaa-Akbar or petitioning against Shriya Sharan for wearing vulgar clothes in public). But as they say it’s never too late to learn. So, what are we waiting for? The school bell? Let’s get started.

I must admit here that unlike others, I have been blessed with a keen scientific temper. From an early age (like Mithunda in Disco Dancer), I displayed a keen sense of seeking knowledge, asking questions and then idling away my time. These traits clearly foreshadowed my future as a business consultant. Undoubtedly, it was Hindi movies which honed this temperament with some amazing insights into science. In fact, to paraphrase Arun Kolatkar (one of India’s best English poet ever, seriously),

“what is god
and what is science
the dividing line
if it exists
is very thin
at Bollywood
and every other film
teaches you physics or its cousin (biology)”

Lesson #1:
How do you track your dushman in a 10 mile area?

I must have been about ten when I watched Mahendra Sandhu (one of my early Gods of Hindi cinema) “As and In” Agent Vinod. Agent Vinod is an object lesson on physics, chemistry and even biology (you see, Helen played a character called Lovelina). I hadn’t been exposed to any Bond movies or even any English movie till then (no, An Evening in Paris or Night in London didn’t count). That meant I watched this Rajshri flick with sincerity bordering on worship. In one of the early scenes, Agent Vinod receives the following from the in-house scientist – 1) a gun which goes off everytime Agent Vinod puts his hands up in the air (that is to the command of “hands up”, that famous cautionary cry of chor and police alike), 2) A tablet which is actually a micro bomb and 3) a locket and a ring which are actually transmitters. I quickly understood the mechanics of “hands-up” gun and maybe, even the micro-bomb (or micro bum as they say in Hindi in the movie) but what in the world was a transmitter. And then, in one of the crucial scenes in the movie, the chavanni dropped. Agent Vinod actually tracks down a run-of-the-mill villain through the locket transmitter while the ‘receiver’ ring had been dropped in the villain’s pocket sometime in the course of proceedings. Those of you who find Hindi cinema infra-dig should be suitably informed that this trick is employed by Chigurh (Javier Bardem) in No Country for Old Men to track the couple of million dollars of drug money that Moss (Josh Brolin) is hiding in a Motel. While the lesser mortals amongst us ridicule Agent Vinod today, No Country gets nominated for hazaar Oscars this year. When will we appreciate our own worth?

Anyway, this entire scene made me fully aware of transmitters and their practical application (tracking enemy spies hiding in hotels). Some five years later, as the rest of the class struggled to understand transmitters, geosynchronous satellites, Doppler Shift, Kepler’s Law of Planetary Motion et al in the physics class, I sat smugly, secure in my strong grounding in such obvious knowledge through Agent Vinod. And when the teacher asked us for potential practical uses of a geosynchronous satellite, I was the first to raise my hand (no, the gun didn’t go off) and answer “for military intelligence to track enemy spies”. As Kabir Bedi would say in a famous 80s TV ad, it was ‘full marks to you and full marks to JK Tyres”.

Lesson #2:
How do you have 3 people donate blood to a single person lying on deathbed?

“Patient ko khoon ki zaroorat hai” is a line which every self-respecting doctor in Hindi cinema has mouthed over the years. This line is typically accompanied by background score which portends a major calamity. Background music in Hindi cinema, of course, deserves a post of its own. One of the big problems with life, I have realized, is there’s no background music which helps you predict what’s going to happen. Anyway, khoon ki zaroorat has spawned a plethora of educational scenes, none of which can compare with one mind-boggling sequence from Manmohan Desai’s Amar Akbar Anthony.

Through a series of unfortunate incidents, you have three boys separated from their parents, Nirupa Roy and Pran. The three kids grow up separately as Amar (Vinod Khanna), Akbar (Rishi Kapoor) and Anthony (Amitabh) in three different households. Now, Nirupa Roy is in the hospital needing khoon while Neetu Singh (the doctor and the love interest of Rishi Kapoor) is looking for donors. But there is a twist. When Rishi Kapoor comes to the hospital for his daily rendezvous, Neetu Singh asks him this critical question, “Kya tumhara khoon Rh hai?” Once it is ascertained that it is indeed Rh, we see Amar, Akbar and Anthony (who have all reached the hospital on some pretext or the other) on 3 different beds with a maze of tubes running around the beds to a single khoon ka bottle which is then connected to Nirupa Roy. Even as I write this, I get goose pimples. What a moment of cinematic brilliance coupled with basic education on biology. Years have passed since the release of AAA, but Hollywood has found it difficult to adapt this to their milieu. Don’t be surprised though that some Lynch or Fincher movie next year has such a scene and everyone goes ga-ga over how they’ve shredded all established notions of screenplay that Syd Field had assiduously built up over years.

A few years later, as the Biology teacher elaborated on blood groups and what is meant by A+ and A-, I sat there thanking Manmohan Desai. The positive and negative of a blood type were based on Rh factor apparently. I still didn’t know what Neetu Singh meant by “kya tumhara khoon Rh hai?” but there was a feeling of supreme confidence as I sat nodding in the classroom. And when the test paper had a question on which blood group type is the Universal Recipient, I fought hard not to answer ‘Nirupa Roy’ (which to my mind is the correct answer even now) and wrote AB+.

Lesson #3:
How do you win a badminton match?

Hindi cinema focused on all-round development of the child. Not content with providing examples of applied physics and biology (as illustrated above), it also has given us important lessons on sports. Sports build character and I will illustrate this with an example that shows how to build a character in less than 5 minutes.

Humjoli is a film which goes into the ranks of cult cinema purely on the basis of one song, “Dhal gaya din”. Jumpin Jeetu and Leena C in a short minute or two show us how to play a good game of badminton. First, you need to be properly attired for the game. As my P.T. instructor would say, “A kit is like the armor of a warrior”. So, for the male of the species, this should mean a white organ-hugging trouser (with two pockets at the back and the front) and a bosom-hugging T-shirt. Many of you would say, what’s new about that. Well, let me give the three things which really make a difference. A good pair of white leather shoes, a black faux leather belt and above all, a sone ka chain around your neck. You are ready for the kill. On the distaff side, it would mean a figure-hugging pink salwar-kameez, a pink dupatta tied around the head and flowing freely on your right shoulder and no shoes. Thus fortified, you can go ahead and play some amazing drops, smashes, ‘between-your-leg’ picks and also take some time-out between the games to prance on the wooden audience gallery and roll on the grass (see the video here).

A few year down the road, I got most of the attire right (didn’t have a sone ka chain) and won my first round match at the inter-house tourney. But I met my match in the second round and wondered how Hindi cinema could betray me such. Till I understood why they had those lyrics, “dhal gaya din, ho gayi sham”. It meant that was the attire for winning an evening match. And I played my second round in the afternoon! Unfortunately, there was no sequel to Humjoli so we wouldn’t ever know how to win a badminton match during the day.

So, ends our first class on lessons learnt from Hindi cinema. There are many more to come including the seminal how do you save a woman who is almost freezing to death (answer – inhe sharirik garmi ki zaroorat hai) and what do you do when you face a live bear in front of you? But those lessons can wait for some time. Till then, please revise this chapter.