Udaan : All that T(or F)akes to be a Man !

I know there’s a very weird being inside me, who keeps on talking about something or someone it loves, and never stops though the normal side of me knows that others sitting around ,who are 100 times more normal than my normal being, are getting extremely bored and on the verge of stitching up my mouth. When I thought about writing this down on paper, my weird side was obviously on a very high note and at its wildest best. So there was hardly any chance that the normal side could have conquered his opposite down. So please forgive me or rather that weird side.

First thing first, I liked the movie “Udaan”, directed by Vikramaditya Motwane, and I was very disappointed on myself, for not being able to take out ample time to write something about it when it had released in theatres.

Most of the Hindi movies of recent times do not even bother about keeping the title of the movie reasonable, as Shakespeare ushers his hello on bollywood; “what’s in a name” you know. But we are neither talking about any Shakespeare nor about any Karan Johar, we are talking about Anurag Kashyap, the genius and his talented assistant and now the director of his very own film, Vikramaditya Motwane. Udaan’s title was a very puzzling one for me at the beginning when I just came out from the theaters. I mean, Udaan for what? Why Rohan needs to take off? Is it because he has been expelled from school for watching B-grade Hindi movie, jumping the walls of the hostels? Is it just like “Wake up side”? Is “taking off” synonymous to “waking up” like the way Sid (Ranbeer Kapoor) did?

The answer is big and loud “No”. There’s a huge gap, between a Rohan coming from an industrial town like Jamshedpur and a Sid, coming from the city of Mumbai. You see, Dil Chahta hai, you find a group of three friends, who cares about life partners, having fun in life. There’s no pressure of future, if nothing turns out properly then there’s a father to hold his shoulder. On every thing said and done, there’s a clear cut Farhan Akhtar stamped all Over DCH. The Farhan we all know the son of a renowned lyricist of India. For small town guys like Anurag himself, if you don’t do it all by yours, you are finished. You may a have a father, but he is not your Godfather you know!


For me Udaan is neither about the generation gap between a small town Father and his son nor about the fight of a son against his Hitler like dad, who wants to make a prototype of his wishes in the form of his son. Udaan is about men, and masculinity! And this movie defines the flight (Read Udaan) of a man, as he fights (not flight again!) the gravity of the perception rooted in this male dominated world of him being hailed like a hero, truly because of his masculinity. How clichéd that sounds for Rohan, the protagonist of Udaan, when he faces no female characters around him, to stand his authority that he deserved by his inheritance. Yes, Udaan does not deal with any female characters, and has a very definite reason behind it.

Udaan is a tight slap on the face of male chauvinism, when the boy is left alone in his growth and no girl is growing up side by side. Is it not true that when we present a doll to a girl, we are squeezing her down in choice of something different that may relate to independence or freedom? Similarly should not some one stand and say that presenting a computer game of gun fight to a boy, is making him incomplete from the beginning of his life; as he will continue to live like a hypocrite throughout his life, thinking oh I have brought so many down, I am at the peak of manliness, what he is not? Its like hitting a six by a tap of a key on a keyboard and not even holding the bat properly when balls are bowled over 80 miles per hour. We live in a very male dominant society, where valor is supposed to be men’s right and chastity is girl’s virtue. But when a boy grows up to a man, he genuinely feels that the results happening around him are extremely biased and that decays him from inside as he hardly complains.

A MAN CAN ONLY FEEL AND FIGHT, WHEN SOMEONE BREAKS THAT BARRIER OR THE FENCE OF INEQUALITY. YES, THE JUDGEMENT DAY ONLY COMES WHEN THERE’S ONLY MEN AROUND A MAN.

There are three male characters in the movie, which represents three different stages of manliness and you will be really thinking on the wrong side of it, if you judge their activities by their age. Each of the character has his own share of clash with the other in terms of manliness. Bhairav Singh (Ronit Roy) plays a very rude and disciplinarian father in Udaan, and you can easily think him as a psycho. Don’t do that I say, because you will be trapped. Now why I am saying that, let me explain.

Do you remember the initial battles between Rohan and Bhairav Singh? The two men trying desperately to knock the other down; if not by the muscle power, then by words I guess. EXAMPLE – Bhairav wants him to be called a Sir rather than Dad or Papa. You will see clearly a Bhairav grooming somewhere inside Rohan [“Ghumiye ache Sokol Pita sob sishur e Ontor e” There’s every father sleeping inside his child]. Though Rohan does not express himself strident, like the way Bhairav does, but he too claims his superiority over Arjun and reacts the same to Arjun as his father does to him. Remember Arjun getting stuck between His father and the big brother, and jumping the stairs up and down like a shuttle-cock. Udaan very quickly settles the priority queue of manliness.

Rohan makes his Father waiting in his car intentionally and eventually Bhairav leaves the place dejected, or should I say that was his punishment to Rohan. Instead of giving Arjun the company Rohan, just like his Father, leaves for his work. The poor little Arjun helpless by the battle of two superior masculine tries to hold the hand of Rohan. Rohan takes his hand away. Arjun understands the first lessons of masculinity. What it takes to be a man, when he is living with two out and out men, devoid of any feminism inside. Arjun walks alone.

Smoking, Driving, Big tattoos on Muscles, Drinking alcohol and committing sex; that define Masculinity for Bhairav. He checks with Rohan whether he has done all of them or not, and when he finds the last one is missing on the list, he jumps on Rohan and abuses him straight way “Aare tum toh ladki ho”. The pride of being a man is on forth and roaring.

Arjun smallest of the lot, who can’t stand on his rights does the same when there’s no one watching him. He takes his small toys and abuses the bigger one of Rohan. That’s his own battle you know, within himself. A rage of angst was building inside Arjun too, as he continues to call his elder brother “disgraceful” on loosing the sprint against his father on each and every morning. Eventually he lands his anger on a girl in school, bullied by the lot continuously.

Even if we talk about Appu, the home left Senior of Rohan; we will only see continuity across the families of Jamshedpur. Appu could not stand on the fact that his drunk father beats his mother day in and day out. So when he puts his father out of his house, his mother could not agree to the fact that Masculinity is loosing its stride against feminism. Appu leaves the room for ever.

Now a single incident turns it all around for Udaan, generating the fuels for Rohan to take off and fly past this rude, pathetic Bhairav-ish attitude by a long way.

Bhairav Singh beats Arjun badly and admits him in Hospital. Rohan stays there in the Hospital for taking care of Arjun. There’s still that barrier between Arjun and Rohan, you see. Arjun does not agree to get naked in front of his elder brother. That white screens drawn by Rohan was not just a mere cover, its pride curve of masculinity that was just on the scratch move from the nascent stage inside Arjun.

Do you know what turned Rohan around, what made him to put this barrier down? It’s the photos that he saw of his mother. For the first time he understood what love of a female means to a man, otherwise how incomplete he becomes as a personality. Do you remember him saying to Arjun, that there’s a different smell to mothers love. Arjun listens to his elder brother, as he does not know what its means, he never enjoyed it. Arjun does not even remember his mother’s face.

Rohan gives the love back to Arjun that was on priority not to make another Bhairav Singh in this world. Do you remember him writing on his last letter to Bhairav that one piece like him is enough for this world as he does not want another devil to come up in the form of Arjun. The DNAs that Rohan inherited from his mother seems to be working slowly. Suddenly, we see a different Rohan altogether, as if he is the mother of Arjun. He gives away his best toy, books and poems that he has been keeping with him like treasures till that date He reads out his poems and stories to Arjun, to make him feel good, to give him the motherly love at the best he can give.

In the end he does not leave Arjun alone in Bhairav Singh’s dome, he takes Arjun with him. But what he leaves is more important than what he takes with him. He leaves the wrist watch that his father gifted as the sign of his inheritance in this family. By the leaving the watch he not only denies his father's gift, but on the broader point of view he denies the tradition of extreme ugly masculinity that this family is imposing on a boy in the form of inheritance.We see a complete man, taking off, ready to face all the challenges of this world has to offer, with a feministic touch that he developed during his stint in his motherland, Jamshedpur.

P.S: Anurag’s last movie was on Devdas. Devdas is a frustrating idol of a void, a complete pathetic scenario of the highest order. If men start to believe in being a Devdas, living a life like that alcoholic lived, and then it will bring only extinction of masculinity, just like Appu, a Devdas in the making. Someone once said to me “Death is not the biggest tragedy of life; it’s what dies with in you”. Udaan hits the perfect balance between a Devdas and Bhairav Singh, in the form of Rohan and probably as Arjun in future who will aim at the eye of the fish rather being fishy of his own self as a gender and about life on single failure of love life, work or study or anything else.