The John Abraham Question

In an age where “intellectual” has become an insult, somewhere between “anti-national” and “person who reads the terms and conditions,” nobody blinks when a film’s failure is explained with “it was too intellectual.” In a nutshell, that is what happened to Madras Cafe. And John Abraham, a man who takes feedback the way he takes protein shakes (in bulk, without chewing), seems to have sprinted to the other end of the scale with his next venture, Parmanu. A film so un-intellectual it could be screened at a WhatsApp University convocation.

I firmly believe Hindi cinema performs a vital public service: filling in the information gaps of the ordinary Indian. And by ordinary Indian I mean the graduate degree holders, typically engineers, the backbone of this modern nation, whose history ends at the Std 10 board syllabus and whose geography extends to wherever the cricket team is touring.

For such people, Madras Cafe was a history lecture with a popcorn break. Over 70% of my theatre had no idea what was going on. The trouble started with the time stamps. Put a precise location, date and time in the corner of the screen and the engineering brain short-circuits: wait… is this real? And at that very moment, curiously, the film starts to look absurd. Someone behind me whispered, “Lekin Indian Army, Sri Lanka mein kaise?” (But what is the Indian Army doing in Sri Lanka?) In his mind, Sri Lanka is the place you send the cricket team when a few seniors need “rest.” Then the penny dropped, or rather fell off a cliff: “Ye real event pe based hai kya?” (Wait, is this based on real events?)

Thankfully Somnath Dey and Shubhendu Bhattacharya, the writers, were not in the theatre, or we’d have had to put them on suicide watch.

The plot was well researched, elaborate and nuanced, low on action, with John Abraham delivering a performance Sunil Gavaskar would describe as “a bowler bowling within his limitations.” Translation: he stood at the right spot with the right expression, and it was the same expression throughout. So most of the theatre slept through most of the film, abandoned the plot somewhere around the interval, and woke up just in time to feel relieved it was over. The exit-gate review summed it up: “Movie toh Sri Lanka mein thi, toh Madras mein kya hua tha?” (The movie was set in Sri Lanka, so what happened in Madras?) The answer, my friend, was the entire point of the film. And the title.

Predictably, the film was a success in critical circles (the non-profit wing of Bollywood) and nosedived at the box office. The popular theory: it was too intellectual for Indian audiences. Diagnosis complete. Patient handed a lollipop.

Now, identifying the problem is supposed to be the hard part. Which brings an unlikely memory to mind. First-year engineering. Engineering Drawing. A textbook (no, a ten-kilo block pretending to be a textbook) called Phakatkar, with at least a hundred solved problems per chapter, useful for studying, self-defence and pressing flowers. One chapter was on “lines”: looking at a line from various views, top view, side view, front view, and then drawing the entire kachra on paper.

The concept is esoteric. Looking at a 3D object from different angles makes sense. But a line from any angle is still a line! Turn it however you like, it refuses to become anything more interesting. You end up with a page full of lines and alphabets scattered like a crime scene. And if that wasn’t strange enough, there were problems with imaginary lines: two apples are hanging from a tree; if you draw an imaginary line joining those apples… nothing further. Even recollecting it hurts.

Come the semester exam, the exact same problem stared at me. The apples had been replaced by mangoes (seasonal upgrade); every value was the same. At that instant I knew it was a problem of lines. I knew the page number, the chapter number, the date and time I had first read it, and probably what I’d had for lunch that day. BUT I could not recollect the solution. Which gives us the first important conclusion of the day:

The rational reader may say: fine, identifying the problem isn’t sufficient, but surely it’s necessary. Allow me to shatter that myth. The only person in my class who got that problem right was a dude who had drawn random straight-line doodles all over his answer sheet. When we told him afterwards, his reaction was pure Zen: “Yeh line ka problem tha kya!” (This was a problem of lines?!)

And then there’s Einstein: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Which proves that once you’re famous enough, you can say absolutely nothing about how to solve a problem and people will still put your poster on their wall. (Guilty. Still up. Right next to the Phakatkar.)

Back to Parmanu. John & Co. identified “being intellectual” as the problem with their last film, so the solution was obvious: dumb it down. Remember, this is a film about nuclear testing. A covert operation planned over years under the nose of spy satellites. And the brief was: make it less complex. That’s like being asked to explain integration and differentiation using only the multiplication table.

(Geek joke alert. Engineers may laugh now. Everyone else, please wait for the song.)

The result is a cross between Gadar and Style: the chest-thumping of one and the logic of the other. The pinnacle of “Oh shit, what is this” is the use of Hindi film songs as passwords to enter a top-secret testing facility. A nuclear facility, guarded by Antakshari. And to add to the agony, the songs have no relevance whatsoever to the operation. Not even a patriotic one, no “Ye desh hai veer jawanon ka,” nothing. Just random hits, as if the security clearance was handled by a wedding DJ.

Then there’s Eagle-Eyes John, spotting a spy satellite from the ground with his naked eye. No telescope, no radar, just eyeballs. Why did we ever spend money on ground stations? The man is one.

Even Kaka from the Marathi play Pati Sagle Uchapati would be impressed. Kaka’s boast was “Mi udtya pakshyachi savli baghun sangu shakto ki var to pakshi kontha aahe” (I can look at the shadow of a flying bird and tell you which bird it is up there). John doesn’t need the shadow. He reads the satellite straight off the sky, at a few hundred kilometres, in the dark.

In parts the film draws inspiration from CID. The female officer is baffled as to how John’s wife found his secret hideout. “Lekin usse pata kaise chala?” (But how did she find out?) she asks. Then again. And again. Four, maybe five times, with rising intensity,

• Lekin usse pata kaise chala?
• Lekin usse pata kaise chala?
• Lekin usse pata kaise chala?
• Lekin usse pata kaise chala?!
• LEKIN USSE PATA KAISE CHALA?!
• [no response: timing device]

while John sits in a parallel universe worrying about a timing device. At this point you half expect ACP Pradyuman to walk in, twist his fingers and announce, “Daya, kuch toh gadbad hai.” (Daya, something is definitely off.) Daya, meanwhile, would have broken down the door, the facility and the plot.

Thankfully the character names stray far enough from the real architects of the test. Otherwise many bald heads would be tearing out hair they no longer have.

So Parmanu ends up as a nothing film. It isn’t as articulate as Madras Cafe, and it isn’t gloriously, unapologetically dumb like Housefull, where at least everyone is on the same page (page one, in crayon). It feels good in moments, but overall it’s a disappointment. Disappointing because Parmanu could have been made on a smaller budget than Madras Cafe. Madras Cafe hopped across multiple locations; Parmanu happens in roughly two, a desert and an office. With a bit of effort it was possible to inject nuance and thrill without taking much commercial risk. The desert was right there. Sand is free.

At this point you might think I’m one of those couch potatoes who are brilliant at pointing out mistakes but never actually make anything. Fair. But rest assured, my concern is purely patriotic. We now run the risk of an entire generation of young Indians marching up to the gates of the National Defence Academy, clearing their throats, and singing “Chand sa roshan chehra…” in the hope that it opens.

And the scary part? After Parmanu, they’ll fully expect it to.