As protests against PK got increasingly virulent, the film fast acquired a cult status among movie-goers and seriously threatened fundamentalist fringe groups
The protests in December 2014 against Rajkumar Hirani’s PK – a delightful, landmark film that has charted new cinematic territory while remaining moored in the ethos of cinema as both epoch-maker and manifestor -- can be explained in this line -- Ee saara khel darr ka hai! (This whole charade is based on fear!)
In one memorable scene half-way through the film, Aamir Khan as PK is condemned to purgatory by Parikshit Sahni, who plays the godman-fearing father of TV journalist Jagat Janani (Anushka Sharma).
Wide-eyed, perennially-perky PK had just questioned Sahni’s blind faith in godmen like the ubiquitous Tapasvi Maharaj, who determines, directs and dictates everything Sahni and his family does – from extracting a tooth to disowning their feisty daughter for her unconventional life choices.
But as PK rightly says, “Ee saara khel darr ka hai!”
It’s probably why -- despite the fact that PK earned over Rs 600 crore in two weeks and was loved equally by English-espousing techies, Hindi-heartland business families and Bhojpuri-speaking masses across the country of all religious affiliations and irrespective of these -- there were demands to ban the film, calibrated incidents of arson and increasingly violent protests to stop its screening.
Here’s why you must see PK -- a cinematic labour of love.
Remote Sensibility
PK (does it mean Psychokinesis – a supernatural psychic ability?) is an otherworldly being who is sent to Earth to “research” human beings. Within minutes of landing somewhere in the Thar Desert, he is robbed of the remote that will help him summon the spaceship back home – a planet quite, but not really, like ours.
In pursuit of his remote thief, PK arrives in that biggest rumoured meeting ground of thieves in the country – Delhi! It’s in this city of nearly 2 Crore that, unable to find his remote, PK instead seeks God – who according to earthlings, is the panacea of all ills, the deliverer of all evil, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent.
But running into a roadblock again, all that the wide-green-eyed alien finds at every step is manufactured (by man) divinity – in the form of superficial religious rites, baffling nomenclature, fear-inducing beliefs and conflicting spiritual practices.
Soche bin samjhe jatan karta hee jaata hoon, Inn karodon ki tarah main sar jhukata hoon (Suspending belief and logic I keep exerting and bow down before you, like these crores of others!)
PK’s prized possession eludes him until he meets TV journalist Jagat Janani (Jaggu) who helps him recover the remote from corpulent Tapasvi Maharaj, who is showing it off to his millions of devotees as a serendipitious benefaction, straight from Lord Shiva.
Interstellar Line-up
After Lagaan, Aamir Khan stopped being only a romantic hero or just an actor and became more than the sum of his parts. For the vast majority of Indians, post-Lagaan, Khan turned into that favourite, familiar, fraternal figure who can be trusted to take on the role of empathiser, activist, crusader, conscience-jolter. Always, always, wearing his heart on his sleeve (even when there’s no sleeve or when the sleeve is covered in garish cotton/polyester prints like in PK) and seen as being willing to risk his skin to prove his platitudes. In PK, despite being an alien, Aamir has never appeared more familiar, more engaging, more human, more humane.
Boman Irani as Jerry Bajwa, the tormented-by-Tapasvi-Maharaj-editor of a TV channel expertly essays the role of the kind, large-hearted, avuncular mentor to Jaggu. Jerry is a kindred soul, someone the best of us owe our professional success and moral well-being to.
Anushka Sharma as Jaggu is a delight in most scenes of the movie and a treat in the song sequences, with Sushant Singh Rajput as Sarfaraz Yusuf ably lending romantic charm and underplayed gravitas to the movie. Saurabh Shukla as Tapasvi Maharaj is every bit as manipulative and mercurial as any real-life godman.
Where’s the mark? Thappa kahan hai?
PK comes up aces on all cinematic fronts. Its narrative opening smoothens the way for an even-paced, high-on-humour screenplay that sets the rhythm of the movie with a serious (potentially explosive) theme and prevents it from becoming pedantic. PK’s songs are memorable in their seamless contribution to the film’s narrative, adding expertly to rather than taking away clandestinely from the story. The camera memorably captures all the nuances, every inflection, each fleeting emotion traversing PK’s visage – as he tries, so earnestly and hopelessly, to make sense of life on embattled Earth. Raju Hirani expertly wields the director’s invisible wand, as he works magic on celluloid through the sheer force of his affirmative belief in all things bright and beautiful. And noble, and brave.
Because, if PK can be described in one word, that word is brave. Always remaining on the less glamourous side of brave – bravura and never crossing over to the other, more appealing one – bravado, Raju Hirani and Aamir Khan, with much help from Boman Irani and Vidhu Vinod Chopra, have scripted a box office success story that treads lightly on socio-cultural landmines and comes out alive and laughing.
Consider this: PK has no idea of sin or atleast of sex being sinful (a reference to the golden era before the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden) and so he wanders around unclad till he is forced to look for clothes in ‘dancing cars’.
He learns Bhojpuri, one of the most lyrical languages on Earth, in a brothel from a prostitute, thus subtly and poignantly bringing redemption to a vocation legitimised and endlessly stigmatised by men. Then with his insatiable, childlike curiosity, PK wanders the pediatric wards of Delhi hospitals looking for the thappa (mark) of religion on newborn babies.
He also ‘borrows’ money for his daily sustenance from firmly-secured donation boxes in temples overflowing with cash. Any other film, with double the talent, could not have completed this journey as valiantly as PK and rejoiced, at finding, by the end, the vast majority of Indians – pluralistic and peace-loving, as its fellow travellers.
That leaves us with the anarchist fringe groups that resorted to violence in the name of protecting an ancient symbiotic religion by demanding a ban on a film.
To them, here’s what PK would have said, “Jisne itti badi duniya banayi, ee sab kuch banaye, Uski raksha tum hiyaan apne itte se gole par baith kar karoge? Usko tumhari raksha ki jarurat naahi hai, haan! (The Creator who created this entire universe and everything in it, including you, does not need you to protect her!)
