I thought as much. But being the perfectionist that he is, Aamir Khan(Rancho), the lead actor has ensured that nothing seems fake or too unreal, for example the scene where he carries out the delivery of a new-born with help from a surgeon over webcam is quite well shot. When he's told that a vacuum pump will be required to get the baby out safely, he uses a vacuum cleaner, controls it's pressure by mounting a pressure gauge in between and uses his photographer friend's equipment cleaning nozzle as the tip of the pump. I thought it was a brilliant hack. The lead character is as close to a hacker as it can get, and best of all he's not called a hacker even once in the film, it is not a poor stereotype you see in hollywood films. My guess is that the director just made the character to suit his film but by mere accident he's managed to get a very good portrayal of a hacker.
After I watched the movie, I could relate so much to Rancho, except for he always complained about the education system, but still stuck on and also topped his class whereas I chose to drop out. Engineering colleges in India are very much like a rat race. My neighbour took an year off after high school just to prepare for cracking the IIT entrance exam. He didn't manage, and is now on the verge of completing his engineering degree from an above average college. I just met him yesterday almost after 2 yrs. and he told me that while he's managed to get this far, he has no clue of what he wants to do with his life, he said he always did what all his peers were doing, what his seniors said he should be doing, without having interest in any of it. And now he's stuck. He doesn't whether to get a job or do an MBA. Now I see him preparing for entrance exams for B-schools just the way he did for IIT's 5 years back. He's finished one rat race and about to get into another one!
OTOH, I enrolled in distance learning program after I dropped out of engineering and spend most of my time self learning and experimenting. I know what I wanna do with my life and am not confused.
But there is a social stigma at play here, my parents never know what to tell friends and family about what their son is doing, whereas my friend is a "well-educated, hard-working engineer" in the eyes of everybody who has done his parents proud.
> But there is a social stigma at play here, my parents never know what to tell friends and family about what their son is doing
LOL, I can totally relate to this! About 6 months ago I walked away from a fairly cushy job to try striking it out on my own. I don't intend to go back into the corporat culture ever again. My parents are too embarrassed to tell others that their scholarship winning, academic hotshot of a son is now "jobless" :-)
A very nice side effect was that the pressure to get married stopped. BTW, can you even imagine what this pressure must be like for the women.
This attitude is not even only in India, but also seeps into the Indian culture in America. I dropped out of engineering and pursued History. I really love computers and programming, but I sort of lost interest in studying it at the university as it was just a rat race.
After a semester of exploring random classes I decided that I wanted to do History. It wasn't an easy choice by any means. Previous to this exploration I was really trying to focus on doing well in engineering, but I was constantly fighting myself. I would say that was one of the worst periods of my life. I was doing something which I felt I was obliged to not because I truly enjoyed it.
I talked to my parents and they were open with me changing my majors. I think that was my biggest fear, what my parents would think. When they accepted my change of major that was big relief for me. However, when I told my relatives (here in the states) they had quite a shock.
I must say changing to history was one of the best things I have done. I love studying it as opposed to drudging it. The wonderful thing is that I supplement history with classes from the linguistics, psychology, and economics departments.
Further, since I am concentrating on Indian history whenever I talk with Indians (from India) more often than not I know much more about India than them.
This rote learning is why India has not produced an Apple or Google! That's not to say there aren't brilliant engineers in India, there definitely are! But family and friends in India see outside the box thinking as unusual. When I visited India over the summer and told people I studied History they did not comprehend what that meant. The choices were: business, doctor, or engineer.
I actually just got back from seeing this movie and it was great :) It wasn't too technical; it focused on the stress that comes with engineering school and how you shouldn't be going to school for a degree but because you want to learn.
A perfect movie to see with a bunch of my friends, since we are all grad students at Georgia Tech. Aal izz well :)
Seeing as how this was just a cursory review of the movie, let me add a few things I noticed about this film as I watched it with my wife earlier this week. This being a Hindi film catering to a large Indian population, you may miss out on the subtle play-on-words humor and you might find the song and dance sequences unnecessary. Do not let that deter you from watching this movie till the end as the crux of the movie lies in the uniqueness of the central character, Rancho and his views of the entire education system.
I was born in India and unlike most of my friends at home, I went to a boarding school for about 7 years. Those years I spent at RKC ( http://rajkumarcollege.com/ ) helped develop my personality from a wannabe-Chatur to someone who personally identified with Rancho. While attending undergrad and grad school here in US I realized how heavily creativity is emphasized even in non-art/non-literature classes. By and large studying in India is the same from kindergarten all the way through undergrad and grad school - rote memorization and re-application of known techniques. This is what the movie repeatedly tries to call out against and this is a first public attempt of it's kind. Every single educated person in India has gone through decades of miserable memorization to prove that they are intelligent even though recollecting from memory isn't the same as solving the unknown. Now we have a country of billion people who think the smartest ones are those who can remember everything and regurgitate it during a 3 hour exam.
The underlying theme of the movie is questioning if higher education is really the answer to India's problems. The sole mantra in India for past sixty years has been that education is the only way to rise out of dire poverty. Family and social well-being are core to the Indian value-system and this movie highlights the pressure on the students to succeed at all costs, failing which the sister doesn't get married or the mom doesn't get to buy food. Not much room for exploration and discussion when, as one of the actors puts it, mom's sari (garment) gets in the way.
Education as a surefire way to success was indeed possible when a vast section of the populace was uneducated and just being fluent in English guaranteed a job at a multinational corporation opening a branch in the country. However, now that the country is full of educated, ambitious youth, what good is it if they all read the same books and answered the same exams in the same exact correct way? The lack of diversity and creativity gives rise to the only way for students to gain competitive advantage - better grades.
Here on HN we spend hours each day coming up with a new, unique, more efficient solution to a problem faced by all. Now imagine studying for 15-20 years and not being allowed to come up with ONE new idea because it is not in the book or course schedule. In most of the western world, people take the ability to "do what you want" for granted so much so that not getting to do what you want is treated as failure. You like photography but due to bills have to work as an insurance agent? You're a failure! In India, you have a job as an insurance agent with a steady paycheck instead of some random fad-profession like photography? You're a success!
Personally, what hit home the most (and caused me to tear up uncontrollably) was the scene where Farhan talks to his dad about leaving his engineering degree and going to pursue his passion of photography. In 2000, I had nearly the same confrontation with my father. I was sick of studying business and wanted to come to US to learn Computer Science. Everyone in my family and our social circle was a business-owner or salesman. It wasn't that I was breaking social boundaries that shocked everyone. It was that I was fighting for my right to pursue a field I loved instead of a safe-bet field such as business like everyone else I knew. At one point, Rancho says that the only reason he got the highest grades in Engineering was because that was his passion. I have felt the same about computers ever since I was the kid and even though my family encouraged me to pursue my interest in the field as a hobby, taking it up as a career was frowned upon.
There's a small bit in the movie about Indian degrees being a mere stepping stone for securing a job in the US and having a successful life. That belief is absolutely true and is often what negatively impacts me the most here in US. I've lived and breathed computers, numbers, science, and programming for two decades now and yet most everyone back home and even here think that I'm doing it solely for the money like a million others. Immediately I'm lumped in with anyone who went through a 2 month Aptech course.
Every now and then people back in India ask me why I'm not making millions and billions starting my own software company because that is regarded as the only path to success for expatriates. After all, why else would I have come all the way to US if not for unlimited wealth? I have a hard time explaining to them that I did it for passion and knowledge instead of money. The simple issue here is that we Indians push our children too hard to do what everyone says is the "right" path to success - study hard, work harder - instead of letting the children and youth choose what they truly want to do. My dad supported and encouraged me to learn everything I wanted but when it came to choosing a career and life, I had to stand up and fight for my dreams and I don't regret one bit of it.
I know this isn't a direct review of the movie but I just wanted to write how I truly felt from the perspective of someone who has lived through what the movie talks about.
A Chinese friend of mine had a similar experience. After getting her undergrad & masters engineering degree at MIT, she lands her first job as a writer. The job pays less than what she earned as a graduate student at MIT, but I've never seen her happier. Her parents were both born & raised in the same memorization culture back in China. Let's just say knives went flying when she broke news to her parents about her writing job...
Spot on. You have portrayed the real picture of attitude towards work in India. The above mentioned reasons also account for the scarcity of entrepreneurship and innovation in the country.
Thanks again. Your comment makes up for the lousy wired article.
My point is a simple, mathematical one: 80%. That is a good lower bound on the percent of kids in India that are not in the "system" as described by you, not because their parents are enlightened but because they simply can't afford the system you describe. Most of these kids would attend schools where barely much of anything goes on at all. Those kids aren't going anywhere, and by the same token, they aren't spoiled by the learn-by-rote system either. There is a ton of talent there to be tapped, if the concern is that learn-by-rote system has totally destroyed the creativity of the other 20%.
I am not saying this to justify the education system in India or to refute what you said, but to simply point out the existence of the other 80%.
While I totally agree with most points in the movie, my experience has always been mixed. I have had teachers who prefer an answer which speaks for my understanding of the concept rather than rewriting (or what they called vomitting) of what is in the text book. They were my real inspiration. I have had teachers in the other side too.
I had made up my mind to become a software engineer in 1996 after seeing a paint program made completely in BASIC by our physics teacher. When the day came to choose my career, there was opposition. It was 2002; things weren't looking good for a software engineer then. Inspite of the stiff opposition of the so called "people around me" my parents fully supported in choosing CS. It was definitely not because I would make a lot of money.
I bump into people with similar experience almost everyday in my life. People who chose CS over doctor; people who are singers and not engineers; people who run their own factory instead of working in an MNC; people who work in "techy" jobs when MBA/Management is the order of the day and people who just do what they want to do. It all boils down to the guts you have and to some extent the ability to earn the trust of people who matter to you.
Simply blaming on the system is not acceptable to me. If you feel you are right, stand up to it. Convince people who think you are wrong. If you feel it's not your job, don't expect to be spoon fed. End of the day we are to be blamed if we feel we have a miserable life.
It sounds like they drew a lot of inspiration from the book Five Point Someone by Chetan Bhagat, which follows three similar students making their way through IIT Delhi, one of the most prestigious (real) universities of India. It's a great read, quite light and slapsticky at times, sad at others. I spent six months at IIT and it's really quite realistic.
Also in reply to sid0 below - ok, so it seems I've maybe picked the wrong term saying it's "realistic". Obviously, the book is a novel, and on top of that partly a comedy. Hopefully no one believes that crashing into a professor's home and wearing his shirts is everyday life at IIT.
However, would you not agree that the general atmosphere, such as the hostel life, the exam pressure, going out for ice cream to check out the girls, their conversations about the future, and all this is pretty much the real thing? It's how it felt to me, but then I'm a foreigner.
Again, a bit, but a lot of people are quite unconcerned about their exams.
> going out for ice cream to check out the girls
I don't know anyone who has ever done that here.
> their conversations about the future
Yeah, pardon my French, but most people don't give a fuck about the future. Most people just want to get their four or five years done with and then get out of here. There are a few people who genuinely care about the future, but you won't find them discussing anything in the manner given in the book.
That's funny, my memories must be all fantasy then? Pretty arrogant to tell me what I can and cannot have found at IIT. I have found all of the things mentioned above, and they were more the norm than the exception.
> However, would you not agree that the general atmosphere, such as the hostel life, the exam pressure, going out for ice cream to check out the girls, their conversations about the future, and all this is pretty much the real thing?
My response was to your question. My point was that I disagree with your assessment of IIT life. I didn't make any claims about your experience anywhere. Maybe your experience wasn't representative. Maybe my experience isn't representative. Maybe it differs across IITs (I'm in IIT Kanpur). Who knows?
