He is in a hurry to belong somewhere, even if it’s at the top. As a Tamil from Uganda and Pondicherry unversed in the country’s national language, Chatur has such a scrambled background that his only real identity becomes education and achievement – which is why he blindly subscribes to the outdated system. But what Vaidya’s funny accent here does, apart from sounding hysterical and hammy, is unexpectedly lend him a hidden layer of personality. Over the years, we’ve all encountered a Chatur in our childhoods – the teacher’s pet, the “chaatu,” the frontbencher, the “scholar” who is far more competitive than he ever lets on. While the conflict in Hirani’s films are mostly inter-generational, an intra-generational Chatur represents the disease even within his contemporaries – a hypothetical male product of households run by those like Virus or Doctor Asthana (otherwise Boman Irani’s villains rear daughters in each film, so that the women can merely serve as the love interests and not a withering statement of inheritance). Chatur is the lesser villain of the film – self-aware, unapologetic and an embodiment of everything Rancho (Aamir Khan) is up against – consequently doubling up as the comic relief so that the spotlight remains squarely on Principal Virus. However, Omi Vaidya’s Chatur Ramalingam in 3 Idiots is perhaps the only case of a fresher, teenaged caricature – a requirement in context of the type of youth-centric institution Hirani looks to expose. Therefore, we see older, learned and conservative characters service this over-the-top category – Boman Irani’s Doctor Asthana and Lucky Singh in the Munna Bhai series, his principal “Virus” in 3 Idiots, and Saurabh Shukla’s Tapasvi Maharaj in PK – in order to highlight the unorthodox progressiveness of our younger heroes.ĪLSO READ – TOP 50 MEMORABLE BOLLYWOOD CHARACTERS: NATHU FROM AGNEEPATH This way, they can represent a whole system.
They can represent more than one person – a deep-rooted thinking of sorts – which is why Hirani often uses them as all-in-one antagonists in his socially conscious movies. And caricatures, by definition, lend themselves to the form of established habits and long-term traditions. Crude colloquialisms like “Battery,” “Rotlu,” “Chepu” and “Pheku” have been manufactured to symbolize entire breeds of distinct physical and psychological features.
In a country like India, individuality comes at a premium most of us do tend to categorize people into “genres” on basis of their idiosyncrasies and nature. I usually use “caricature” as a bad word while critiquing films, but this changes in Hirani’s case. One of the most interesting aspects of a Rajkumar Hirani film is the way he, along with co-writer Abhijat Joshi, employs unabashed caricatures to affect his stories. There will be no particular order: just a colourful recollection of emblematic faces who’ve left us craving for more.
In this weekly series, Rahul Desai lists 50 of Hindi cinema’s favourite “third wheels” – that is, memorable characters whose roles are little more than fleeting cameos and little less than supporting turns – since 1990.
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