Noughts & Crosses
Becoming a Chartered Accountant (CA) is tough, and sometimes takes several attempts to crack it; so full sympathy for young students, who keep their lives on hold till they can sign a CA in front of their names; however, unlike, say, medicine, journalism, military, police, or law, there is little or no drama built into the process. Still, the production company, TVF, goes into areas of ordinary, middle class India that few others dare or care to explore. Hence shows like Pitchers, Aspirants, Kota Factory and Half CA come out of their stable.
Since the first season of Half CA had just five episodes, there was enough of a plot left over for a five-episode Season 2, developed by Arunabh Kumar and Harish Peddinti. And because audits, balance sheets, number crunching and suchlike would bore any viewer to sleep, director Pratish Mehta, and the team of writers concentrate more on the romantic lives of the two lead characters, Archie (Ahsaas Channa) and Neeraj (Gyanendra Tripathi).
Both come from Nashik to Mumbai to work at becoming CAs—she is bright and ambitious; his life has dimmed somewhat by constant failure. He is attempting the CA exam for the seventh time and has to put up with taunts from other students in his coaching class. She has passed the Group 1 exam, and while she prepares for Group 2 (non CAs would have to look it up), she takes an ‘articleship’ (a kind of low paid internship, that offers experience to future CAs) in a small firm.
Neeraj, whose parents are encouraging (they pay a Mumbai rent, after all!), looks hangdog, till he reconnects with his former girlfriend Kavya (Aishwarya Ojha). Archie has a group of friends, Parth (Rohan Joshi) is a CA aspirant as driven as her; Vishal (Anmol Kajani) embarks on a different kind of struggle—to become an actor (he is later seen performing a cringey monologue from Laila Majnu on stage)– and her boyfriend Tejas (Prit Kamani), who is studying for B.Com (which CA types look down upon) and does not know what he wants to do with his life.
Between them, that cast, more of less represents the middle class youth of India, who consider education a means of reaching prosperity and some degree of power; though the path to getting into the top professional courses in India (medicine, IIT, CA, MBA) is a back breaking slog, especially in an education system that encourages swotting over independent thinking and enterprise.
In Half CA 2, Archie and Neeraj continue the education battle that they started in the last season. Neeraj is under pressure because he cannot afford to fail and return home as a loser. Archie is burdened with the demands of studies and long hours of articleship, till she reaches the point of something’s gotta give.
Both Gyanendra Tripathi and Ahsaas Channa have the presence to keep the show watchable, with their talent and understanding of the characters’ internal churn. Despite the pace, and small crises popping up in each episode, the work of a CA has nothing interesting in visual terms; where the show scores is in making the audiences care for the characters to the extent that one holds their breath when results are declared. Young audiences would relate to these characters, while older viewers would probably recall their own education and career ladders and do a mental “phew!” that they don’t have to go through it again.
(This piece first appeared in rediff.com)
