Hichki feels more like To Sir With Love despite being an official adaptation of Front of the Class (which in turn was based on Brad Cohen’s book Front of the Class: How Tourette Syndrome Made Me the Teacher I Never Had). Yes, the lead Naina Mathur (Rani Mukerji) does have the neurological disorder and there is an attempt to make one aware of the medical condition. However, there is a bigger leap that the film attempts (not entirely successfully though) to take on dealing with the class divides that underline our society.
After much struggle when Naina finds a job as a teacher, she is assigned the most difficult class – 9F – that has 14 disadvantaged children. Hailing from the poverty-ridden slums, they are “misfits” like her, constantly reminded that “they don’t belong” to the world of privileged education that they have got in. Something that seems to have toughened them, made them distrustful beyond repair. Will Naina, borrowing a leaf out of Thackeray’s (Sidney Poitier) page in To Sir With Love be able to reform them? Will she be able to channelise their disquiet and disruptiveness into something positive and fruitful? Will she be able to stand up to their pranks and win their respect.
- Director: Siddharth P. Malhotra
- Starring: Rani Mukerji, Neeraj Kabi, Shiv Subramaniam, Supriya Pilgaonkar, Sachin Pilgaonkar, Harsh Mayar, Asif Basra
- Storyline: A teacher with Tourette Syndrome helps her class of underprivileged kids rise above their hapless circumstances
- Run time: 118 minutes
Much of the writing is predictable, with one cliché piling on another; the dialogue gets downright hackneyed in places and the climax is protracted and over-dramatised. Then there are characters who veer on the extremes, right down to the class bully Atish (Harsh Mayar) and the rival teacher (Neeraj Kabi), both always trying to bait Naina, being the quintessential villains in her life. I was particularly appalled by the cringeworthy slum tourism scene. The walkabout through the homes of Naina’s kids feels patently patronising, manipulative and framed from the very privileged perspective and gaze that the film actually intends to critique.
Yes there are some laudable issues that are raised here – that despite the right to education things are not so easy for the underprivileged; that class segregation in our schools continues; that educational institutes are still not the integrative spaces they were meant to be. However, the film doesn’t go past the facile commentary; a very deliberate righteousness and piety, ingrained in the narrative, detracting rather than reinforcing the significant issue of inclusion.
The kids grow on you by the end of the film. Neeraj Kabi does the opposite, manages to disappoint and repel by doing the unimaginable for an actor like him—hamming away. It’s Rani Mukerji who holds the show together with a well-calibrated, surefooted performance. The motor and vocal tics, the involuntary sounds and movements—she uses them in the right measure, at the right place and time. More than that, it’s all about the emotional core of the act. You smile with Naina, get disappointed and dejected with her, feel her elation and cry along when she breaks down. One only wishes there was as much of her personal life as the battles she fights for the kids—especially Naina’s troubled equation with her father dad and the love she shares with her sibling. Sadly, both get short shrift.