Tonee Marie Gabriel

BSN – II

THE THREE IDIOTS

Story line: 3 Idiots is an Indian comedy film about three friends — Farhan, Raju, and
Rancho — who were taking up Engineering in one of the best universities in India. Their
journey was made even more exciting because of interesting personalities like Chatur, Prof.
Virus, err Viru, and Pia. Prof. Viru (whom the students call “virus”) labeled the three friends
as idiots (though they were not really idiots). Farhan Qureshi and Raju Rastogi want to re-
unite with their fellow collegian, Rancho, after faking a stroke aboard an Air India plane, and
excusing himself from his wife - trouser less - respectively. En route, they encounter another
student, Chatur Ramalingam, now a successful businessman, who reminds them of a bet they
had undertaken 10 years ago. The trio, while recollecting hilarious antics, including their run-
ins with the Dean of Delhi's Imperial College of Engineering, Viru Sahastrabudhe, race to
locate Rancho, at his last known address - little knowing the secret that was kept from them
all this time.

Summary: Farhan Qureshi, Raju Rastogi and Ranchhoddas "Rancho" Shamaldas are
three students who share a room in the residence of the fictional Imperial College of
Engineering (ICE). Farhan is studying engineering to pursue his father's wishes, over his own
passion for wildlife photography. Raju is studying to get his family out of poverty. On the
other hand, Rancho studies for his simple passion in machines. Rancho believes that one
should follow excellence, not success, as success will take care of itself if excellence is
followed. However, this different approach is sneered upon by the president of the college,
Professor Viru "Virus" Sahastrabuddhe. Virus's favourite student, Chatur "Silencer"
Ramalingam, believes in mindless memorizing over understanding in order to reach his goals
of corporate status. Raju, who is initially annoyed by Rancho's methods, moves in with
Chatur, where he fares worse. In order to save Raju and provide him with an example, he
sabotages a speech Chatur has been writing to give on Education Speech Night, where the
Minister of Education and the President of the college attend with many students. Chatur,
with his lack of knowledge in Hindi, mindlessly memorizes the compromised paper and
becomes the laughingstock of the night. Highly insulted and driven to vengeance, he swears
retaliation and bets that he will become more successful with his methods than Rancho. Virus
continually attempts to break Rancho's friendship with Farhan and Raju. However, they stick
with Rancho always, who continuously comes first in every exam, while they are always last,
barely passing, due to Farhan's photography passion, and since Raju is a scared man. Things
further escalate four years later when the three friends drunkenly break into Virus's house one
night, in order for Rancho to finally profess his love for Pia; unfortunately Virus finds out.
The next day, Virus threatens to rusticate Raju unless he pins the drunken incident on Rancho.
Not wanting to betray his friend or let down his family, Raju attempts suicide and ends up in
a coma. With two months of extensive care from his mother, Rancho, Farhan, and Pia, he
makes a full recovery and thus discards his fear of the future, adopting Rancho's outlook. His
frankness impresses the corporate agents during a job interview and they hire him. Farhan,
goaded by his friends, convinces his parents to allow him to drop out of school and follow his
wildlife photographer dream.

Furious, with his dignity and pride ruined as a result of Fahran and Raju getting
jobs,Virus schemes to set Raju an impossibly tough final exam, as the job offer is contingent
on graduation. Pia learns of this and informs Rancho and Farhan, who break into Virus's
office for the exam. However, Raju, with his new-found attitude, refuses to cheat and throws
the paper away. However, Virus catches them, beats Rancho with his umbrella, and expels
them on the spot. Pia angrily confronts him, revealing that her brother, whom their father had
pushed to become an engineer despite his preference for literature, committed suicide after
failing ICE's entrance exam three times. After revealing this secret, Pia then flees to her
hospital, sobbing. Later that night, Pia's pregnant older sister Mona goes into labor. A heavy
rainstorm cuts all power and floods the streets, making it impossible for Mona to reach the
hospital, or Pia to reach Mona. The students rig up a power supply and other equipment so
that, with guidance from Rancho & Pia by webcam, they can deliver the baby. The baby is
apparently stillborn, but kicks when the students all chant Rancho's calming mantra "All is
well." Thus, the baby is resuscitated. Virus finally reconciles with Rancho and his friends,
allowing them to stay for their final exams, and giving Rancho an astronaut pen, a symbol of
excellence that he has been keeping for thirty years to give to some exceptional student. Ten
years after Chatur vowed that he'd become more successful than Rancho. Chatur, who now
boasts of his wealth and his bright career with an American company, is eager to rub it in
Rancho's face. Raju and Farhan have tried to find Rancho for five years with no results; with
Chatur's help, they travel to the Chhanchad estate in Shimla, where they find a completely
different man: the real Ranchhoddas Chhanchad. They coerce the man into revealing the truth:
their friend was an orphaned servant boy who loved learning, unlike the man they
encountered, the real Rancho. After seeing the boy's intelligence, Rancho's father arranged
for the servant boy to go to college and earn a degree in Rancho's name. The real Rancho
reveals that their friend is now a schoolteacher in Ladakh.

On the way, the three rescue Pia from an unhappy wedding, over Chatur's objections:
he wants to get the trip finished quickly, because he is in a hurry to seal a business deal with
Phunsukh Wangdu, a scientist with hundreds of patents. In Ladakh, Raju and Farhan find
villagers working with gadgets that show the stamp of Rancho's ingenuity, and learn from
their friend MM that Rancho has all of Farhan's photography/research books, reads Raju's
engineering blog every day, and kept Pia's helmet. The three friends reunite and Pia and
Rancho rekindle their love, while Chatur mocks Rancho – until Rancho reveals his true name:
Phunsukh Wangdu. Chatur, mortified, accepts his defeat and pleads with Phunsukh to forgive
him and accept his company's contract. Phunsukh, Pia, Farhan and Raju run laughing into the
distance as Chatur begs Rancho to sign the contract and save Chatur's job.

In the movie, the mode of teaching portrayed was basically Group Dynamics
patterned in a classroom discussion. Lecture was mostly used in the group discussion. It was
the typical traditional method of teaching where you have the teacher do the discussion while
the students just sit, listen, take down notes, answers questions when asked by the teacher and
in return, students ask questions if they had any. Being engineering students, the students
were also required to create ingenious projects as a requirement for graduation. 45 sets of
exams per semester were administered as a way to test the student’s capacity to understand.
Students relied more on memorization, gained textbook-knowledge which for some were
helpful but made failures out of the other students.

A few minutes into watching and I was laughing out so loud, my son had to hush me
as it was, in his words, “disturbing his play time.” Then there were parts when I cried a bit,
then laughed again. The movie brought me in a roller coaster of emotions. Like a well-
crafted speech, 3 Idiots challenged our minds, touched our hearts, and definitely tickled our
funny bones. What a masterpiece! More than the entertainment, 3 Idiots taught me profound
lessons on some of the most important aspects of life.

On Friendship. Rancho, the lead star, considers a friend as a man’s greatest bosom.
There were a couple of scenes in the movie where he put his friends’ needs before his needs.
Like a true friend, he would go out of his way to help his friends and his friends’ families,
even if this could endanger his life. Despite his super bubbly nature, he touched his friends in
a very deep way, it made Farhan and Raju cry. It made me cry as well. And I bet if you
watched the movie, it made you cry too. He taught Farjan to pursue his real passion in
Wildlife photography and Raju to face his fear of failure.

On Success.

“Follow excellence and success will chase you.”

“Make your passion your profession.”
“Study with all your heart, not just for grades.”
“ Study to be accomplished, not affluent.”

These were some of Rancho’s favorite lines, which he lived by. Rancho always tops
the exams. When asked by his friend Farhan how come he always excels, Rancho’s answer
was simple, “I love engineering. It’s my passion.” He further said, “Follow your talent. Quit
Engineering. Marry photography.” This was because Farhan was so good at Wildlife
Photography, yet, he’s taking up Engineering because it was his parents’ dream for him to
become an Engineer. Raju then asked Rancho how come he (Raju) doesn’t excel even if he
studies hard. Rancho said, “Cause you’re a coward. Scared of the future. With such fear of
tomorrow, how’ll you live today? How’ll you focus in your studies? Go live your
life.” Rancho said it very well, his words pierced my heart. So true. And so I decided to
adopt his mantra “Make your passion your profession.” Every day, I am taking baby steps
towards making that a reality.

On Education. As opposed to Chatur, his competitor, Rancho studied for the love of
it. In fact, he didn’t see Chatur as a competitor. He questioned the educational system. He
said the system highlights grades and jobs instead of ideas and inventions. This made Prof.
Viru furious. There was a scene when Prof. Viru dragged Rancho to an ongoing class and put
him on the spot. Rancho was in front of his classmates and two professors, all anticipating his
move. He looked at the big book the class prof was using, and he wrote two words in the
blackboard. Then he gave everyone 30 seconds to define the words. No one was able to
answer. Then Rancho said,

“When you were asked to define the two words, were you excited, curious? Thrilled
that you’ll learn something new? No. You all got into frantic race.

What’s the use of such methods even if you come first? Will your knowledge increase?
No. Just the pressure. This is college, not a pressure cooker.”

Again, this made Prof. Viru really mad. He challenged Rancho to define the two words.

Rancho was such a clever. He said, “I just invented the words. I was not trying to teach
Engineering. I was teaching you how to teach.”

Rancho believes that by changing the educational system, we can change the world.
He manifested this in his own special way as shown in the latter part of the movie. Rancho
also questioned the grading system. He said that grades create a divide — A Graders =
Masters and C graders = Slaves. He said this because after the term, their class would have a
class picture and those who excel would sit in front (where Rancho usually sits being the
class top-notcher) and those who have the lowest grades sit at the back (where his friends
Raju and Rancho usually sit).

I share Rancho’s view on education. This was one of the many reasons why I was
glued to the movie. Indeed, learning should be exciting and inspiring! Though Rancho’s ways
and beliefs were unconventional and he was always scolded by Prof. Viru, his passion and his
good nature were so vibrant, Prof. Viru gave the “pen” to Rancho towards the end of the term.
Even Chatur who competed wildly against Rancho bowed down to him towards the end of
the movie.

Follow your passion: Very often we deceive ourselves by giving in to the demands of
the people around us, rather than following what our minds dictate. We go by the set
standards of the society and ignore our real passion. This results in dual loss. We end up
becoming mediocre professionals in the field that we enter and on the other hand the field
which happens to be our real passion, loses a potential talent. A person who has a passion for
cooking walks into an engineering college and ends up becoming a mediocre engineer, while
the hospitality industry loses a good chef. Pursuing one’s passion is not easy. We’ll encounter
so many setbacks. Always remember, when a problem bugs you, put your hand in your heart
and say “All is well.”

Strive for Excellence: We tend to define certain parameters of success by looking at

the people who are deemed to be successful in life. We then channelize all our energies in
chasing this perceived notion of success, instead of focussing on excellence in our respective
fields of operation. I have seen many good technologists shifting gears to chase the goal of
becoming a manager by doing people management. The end result is that we lose a good
technologist and get a bad people manager. If the same technologist would have focussed on
developing his skills in technology, he would probably have become an indispensable entity
in the organization and which in turn would have made him successful. As Phunsuk Wangdu
says, strive for excellence and success will chase you.
 Enjoy the present: We either lose ourselves in the maze of past success and failures,
or worry ourselves sick about the future. We cannot change what has already happened and
we cannot predict what happens in future. Instead, if we choose to focus on doing our day to
day work with enthusiasm, we may end up positively influencing the future. It is important to
appreciate the myriad opportunities offered by the present and enjoy the small but beautiful
things happening around us.

I share the same sentiment with Farhan, “Today my respect for that idiot shot up.
Most of us went to college just for a degree. No degree meant no plum job, no pretty wife, no
credit card, no social status. But none of this mattered to him, he was in college for the joy of
learning, he never cared if he was first or last.”

Rancho made me laugh, he jerked my tears. One or the other emotion is at a high, all
the time. But, the question I have about all films that give a "message" in a lighter vein - will
the laughs stick or the message? Will we just laugh every time someone says "O BHAIYYA,
AAL IZZ WELL" or will we subscribe to the fact that "ALL'S WELL"?