I will be in class at 9am tomorrow. If you don’t turn up by 9.10am, I will go to the principal’s office and tender my resignation,” Naina Mathur tells her class of wayward teenagers. The next morning she’s at her desk, but they aren’t. At the stroke of 9.10am, she gets up, resignation letter in hand, and moves towards the door. And then her students start trooping in, one by one. She sits down hiding a smile, but her gleaming eyes are a giveaway. She utters a silent prayer of thanks, picks up a book and says, “Okay class, let’s start over”, a stream of tics marring her speech, but never taking away the smile from her face. That’s the actor we’ve missed at the movies. Welcome back, Rani Mukerji!
Rani’s Naina, an aspiring teacher afflicted with Tourette Syndrome, touches lives and inspires others to believe that their weaknesses can be turned into strengths. That’s what Naina does with her condition, answering questions on it with a smile, and remaining a people’s person even when she’s made a social outcast.
Naina has a dream — to become a teacher. So when the city’s elite school St. Notker’s decides to recruit her after she’s faced rejection from 18 other institutions because of her condition, Naina jumps at it. The offer comes with a rider: she will have to teach 9F, a class comprising students from the nearby slum who’ve made it to the school through the Right to Education Act.
Like Naina, these kids are social outcasts; they walk into school not to study, but to smoke, drink, gamble… one even cuts vegetables in the classroom. They’ve got rid of seven teachers in eight months, but they face a roadblock in Naina, determined as she is to prove a point to the world and more so to her overly critical dad (played by Sachin Pilgaonkar).
At just 118 minutes, Hichki is a breeze, especially in the first half. Naina’s unorthodox ways of teaching gives the film most of its fun moments and once she gets the rebellious kids on her side, their interactions — chomping down ice cream sticks or flying paper planes in the wind — will bring a smile to your face.
Director Siddharth P. Malhotra excels in painting a real picture of school life — sleep-walking through morning assembly to last-minute cramming for exams. What also works is the relationship between Naina and her younger brother (played by Hussain Dalal); their scenes make you chuckle.
Hichki is not without its share of hichkis, though. There’s too much crammed into Half Two, and then the film gets preachy trying to become a commentary on the country’s educational system and the need for inclusion, so Tourette Syndrome ends up being just a plot detail. The film follows the tried-and-tested tropes of an underdog story and throws up no surprises.
A class act from Rani makes you overlook all that. Her tics are spot on, every emotion shows on the face and those eyes are at times jubilant, sometimes teary, but always determined. The kids in the ragtag group have been cast with care and the supporting players — Shiv Subramaniam to Neeraj Kabi — get it right too.
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