Bhool Chuk Maaf: From nikamma to niveshak—Financial lessons buried in the farce | Mint

When the entire cast of the movie is ‘quirky’ then you can guess that the film is not going to work: Sanjay Mishra is a man called Bhagwan who will get you jobs for money; Seema Pahwa is the lad’s mother who runs the Tiwari household by makingachaar; Raghubir Yadav is her husband and the lad’s father, who does not have a job; Rajkummar Rao plays Ranjan Tiwari – the jobless lad who has failed every competitive exam (but has money to buy alcohol for the drunk scenes. Plus an assortment of strange characters: a tailor who has stitched an outsized sherwani for Ranjan, the wild eyed decorator (Amarjeet Singh) who breaks a potted plant, the naked kid who wants someone to clean his butt, two jobless sidekicks to Ranjan, not to forget the annoying uncle who wants the groom to dance, the brother-in-law who insists that he is right…

Now imagine a day with all these characters – Ranjan’s ‘Haldi’ ceremony – recurring again and again until Ranjan learns a lesson that a good deed needs to really be one. It took Bill Murray who plays a selfish weatherman grudgingly reporting an annual event in the US called Groundhog Day (It’s Punxutawney Phil that predicts the weather when he emerges from his hole. It is his shadow that predicts more winter or not… The legend that started during the prohibition – so the pubs could open and celebrations would begin is still a big thing in Pennsylvania and in the US even today)

This film attempting to compete with the iconic Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray stuck in time reminds us of the Hindi idiom: Kahan Raja Bhoj, Kahan Gangu Teli! It means how does a mere oil seller compete with a king? Plus there is a burden on all characters to play every recurring day with the same intensity until the main character learns his lesson. Alas, when the sidekicks say things like ‘why are you saving this guy every day’ defeats the purpose of Ranjan’s ‘Why doesn’t anyone understand that I am reliving the 29th of the month again and again?’ As an audience you don’t find Rajummar Rao stepping into a fresh cow pat again and again funny at all… Some lines elicit a chuckle, but then the moral science lesson of ‘Karm Karo Phal Ki Chinta Mat Karo’ (Do your duty without worrying about its success) and the long speech by Sanjay Mishra about how this lad has saved humanity delivered with all the finesse of a hammer at the wedding makes you want to puke in your popcorn.

What money lessons can you learn from this film?

A recurring day is like your SIP and RD day

Rajkummar Rao has to learn the importance of a ‘mannat’ – a wish made to Mahadev – by reliving the day before his wedding again and again until he does the right thing, the one good deed he promised God in return for a job. He tries giving alms to the poor, food to the poor, even feeds a cow, but he’s stuck in the day: trying out the outsized sherwani, stepping into the cow pat, hearing shopkeepers ask lasciviously, ‘Kyon dulhe raja kaisa chal raha hai?’ The trouble here is, how do his sidekicks say, now try this also? For them shouldn’t it be the only good thing he’s doing?

Doesn’t it remind you of a habit taught by your dad (or mum) when they bought you a ‘gullak’ or a piggy bank when you were a child? They taught you how saving every penny is important. It’s like your bank handing you the passbook every time you put money aside in a recurring deposit. It’s like when the phone pings one day every month to tell you that an SIP has been deducted automatically from your account, adding to your savings for that rainy day.

Recurring deposits will bring you higher earnings than just a savings account because you invest a fixed sum of money at regular intervals for a specified tenure. It’s what investors who prefer safety, choose for their hard earned money. The interest rates offered are comparable to those offered for FDs or fixed deposits offered by the banks.

RDs are an excellent investment vehicle for cultivating the habit of regular savings and earning guaranteed returns. They are suitable for both short and long-term financial goals.

Job security offered by government jobs

Ranjan Tiwari’s story of joblessness is a story common to most of the youth today. The competition is fierce and so is the hopelessness. Now Hamid Ansari has dreams of saving his village by getting a job in the water department so that he can bring water to his drought prone village. Ranjan Tiwari just wants a government job, any government job so that he can marry. Years ago in Maine Pyar Kiya, Salman Khan had to earn money by actually working as a day labourer to prove to Bhagyashree’s father that he’s worthy. You remember Amitabh Bachchan’s voice,‘Main aaj bhi phenke huye paise nahi leta’(don’t take money that is thrown at me) because he works hard for it. Here, Rajkummar Rao’s Ranjan seems to want to get married but doesn’t look like he wants to do any job, let alone work hard. For once I wanted to shake hands with the bride-to-be’s father who said: Get a government job to prove you are worthy of my daughter.

In your money life, you can choose to invest with a safe and secure nationalised bank or an established private bank, but do be careful when you give your money to strange creatures like Bhagwan who takes 2 lakhs from Ranjan as the first payment for a government job. This is like giving your hard earned money to strange chit funds, savings schemes started by someone ‘known to the family’ (Bernie Madoff started his infamous Ponzi scheme just this way!). They will give you some returns in the beginning and then make you invest more and more until they swallow all your savings. Be careful!

Bollywood has given us many movies where the hero has no job and has to learn by hard work to win the hearts of the audience. Rajkummar Rao is a proven good actor but in this movie he plays such an irritable, charmless lad who is exactly what his father calls him: nikamma. You feel no empathy for his situation and neither are you taken by the awful whiny, joyless girl he wants to marry (played rather nicely by Wamiqa Gabbi). Imagine how ghastly this pair is! Why would anyone want to like them, let alone wish them well? Last money tip: Save your ticket money and watch it when it appears on Amazon Prime. This film is a big ‘bhool’ and the waste of your time is not just a mistake worth any ‘maafi’.

Manisha Lakhe is a poet, film critic, traveller, founder of Caferati — an online writer’s forum, hosts Mumbai’s oldest open mic, and teaches advertising, films and communication. She can be reached on Twitter at @manishalakhe.