Rise Of The Loser:
Mainstream Hindi cinema may be slow to catch on to the complexities of a rapidly changing Indian society, but does understand easy slogans like ‘Follow Your Dreams’ or ‘Get Out Of The Rat Race.’ Self help and inspirational books are current best sellers, so somebody must have picked up Varun Agarwal’s Chetan Bhagat-ish novel, How I Braved Anu Aunty and Co-Founded a Million Dollar Company and thought it would make a perfect film for Gen Z, that understands the gig economy, social media marketing, apps and the power of the smartphone.
So, after Nandita Das’s sombre Zwigato, comes the cheery Tumse Na Ho Payega, in which a soulless corporate lifestyle is contrasted with the joys of being your own boss, directed by debut-making Abhishek Sinha, from a script by Nitesh Tiwari and Nikhil Mehrotra.
Using the lazy narrative device of voiceovers and directly addressing the audience, the sad story of Gaurav (Ishwak Singh) is revealed — he is disgruntled because of his dead-end job, though to many, the decent salary and a partying lifestyle would be living the dream!
His bigger problem is Anu Aunty (Meghna Malik), whose over achieving son Arjun (Karan Jotwani) is zooming up the ladder, and her boasts to Gaurav’s mother (Amala Akkineni), are meant to denigrate Gaurav as an unambitious loser. Arjun has also got by his side, Devika (Mahima Makwana), whom Gaurav has crushed on since school. His coping mechanism is venting to his two friends Mal (Gaurav Pandey) and Vaghela (Gurpreet Salini) at the bar or the chai tapri.
An ill-timed remark, overheard by his boss, gets him fired; grumbling from his buddy about bad canteen food gives Gaurav the idea of supplying home-made tiffins to “bhukkad bachelors” working in Mumbai’s corporate hubs. Pre-pandemic this would have been a great start-up plan, but now that anyone who can hold a ladle is a home chef, it’s a saturated market surely, and this plot is late to the party?
As if going into any detail would bore an attention-deficit target audience for the film, Sinha races through the predictable struggle-success-conflict-loss-recovery graph this kind of story would draw, because where else could it go? The greedy, profit-grubbing investor (Parmeet Sethi) is the villain, the cooking moms (the food shots are delectable) are the angels, and Gaurav and Gang are given a lesson in sidestepping the mirage of too much too soon. When a tech nerd Gaurav has hired to do the coding for his Maa’s Magic app quotes his own lines about boredom to him, Gaurav knows a reset is in order, but getting back is tougher than starting—on the bottom rung, even the friendly chaiwala (Omkar Das Manikpuri) offers free tea and seed money.
The mix of a few chuckles and more sermons on How Not to be an Arjun is saved by the energy of its young cast—though Ishwak Singh has done better in past projects– and its relatively short runtime. The character of Devika, who has a very ‘today’ job of a social media manager for celebs is interesting, because she is as aggressive as the guys, and even treats a relationship with an upwardly mobile guy as a goal to be checked on the achievements’ list. And of course, to that chilled out chaiwala, who already knows what they teach you at Harvard (of course that name has to be dropped) Business School, full respect!
(This piece first appeared in scroll.in)