Hichki

A film about Tourette syndrome, ‘Hickki’ seems to be just another feel good film which gives a superficial portrayal about the education system and draws a clichéd picture of the underprivileged students.

First of all why Hichki (which means hiccups) was considered as a title for a film? I haven’t come across any content or information that Tourette syndrome is called hichki in hindi (at least not to my knowledge). I found the entire plot of the film to completely deviate from what the team may actually have longed to produce.

What did they want to show? About the medical condition of a teacher who struggled as a kid and took 5 years to get a dream job in academics due to her condition or struggle of a teacher who was given 9F (a batch of 14 students who belonged to slum areas and who were ‘believed’ to be misfit in the school)?It seemed the core team was confused with the treatment of the plot or they didn’t know how to deal with such cases.

The film shows this group of students as a rowdy batch. Their behavior was stereotyped as rude and unruly. Now I am a teacher by profession and have handled similar cases. Students sometimes are rowdy and undisciplined and hurl insult at the drop of a hat to teachers but they don’t belong to particular strata of a society. This is very myopic. Also the categorization of a separate ‘9F’ group doesn’t work in this way.

The sections of each standard are categorized by their attained marks and percentiles but the economically backward section can’t be categorized in this way. The film showed 9F had few students who had unique qualities like one who could do oral complex mathematical calculations, while other was smart enough to understand physics of life. Each student had some unique qualities.

Now it was a reputed school with experienced teachers. In this case, the so called experienced teachers were supposed to identify all these unique qualities in students and accordingly should have taken up steps to improve the standard of education. But this movie had a completely different approach overall, portraying the teachers as elitist who are more interested in running down these kids, which is not always the case in schools. Here teachers rather secluded the economically backward students and ‘denied’ attending their regular lessons on a daily basis because they are rowdy. This is completely absurd!!!

Initiatives are taken to identify such students and intentionally they are placed in better sections so that the poor students get influenced by the good ones. Moreover, how can a popular school just seclude these students in presence of educational boards? How can the school go on running the educational institutions without sending any ‘official reports’ about the performance of these kids? This film portrayed that one single room was allotted to these students and no teachers were willing to take up their classes or even attend them. THIS IS JUST NOT POSSIBLE!!!

Film production teams are expected to do more research before dealing with such issues. Education system has problems and it needs more deft handling rather than just making a film for the heck of it. Hichkki was a feel good film with songs and some good scenes but a complete disappointment for audience who expect logic and understanding in any movie dealing with students and teachers.

P.S : A much better and aptly handled movie with the same subject is ‘ROUGH BOOK’. In this, the theme has been rightly addressed with the right kind of approach and with a much clearer perspective. Despite being a low budget film with no star cast or any marketing campaign, it does touch a chord with the audience.