Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye

If Cinderella were born in India, she would be Lucky. Yes, dreams are made of this, of TVs, VCRs, plasma screens and Mercedes. The film touches realism so closely that it ends up translating into everybody’s fantasy. A thief, born and brought to be one, realizes very soon that shortcuts actually pay. A hysterical father, a submissive mother and two ordinary siblings, all these elements can constitute any ordinary formula film in which the main protagonist has a promising future ahead, except that he becomes the victim of his society and thus takes an illegal route to success which is rather situational. Here, the hero breeds no such intentions, he neither boasts of philanthropy behind that disguise of a delinquent nor does he goes out to settle the score against that heartless society. He simply steals, that is his raison d’être. Valuable, invaluable, banal, all these are not his concern; perfection, pronounced as realism, contributes to the status of an otherwise ordinary child. Discussing about childhood, the film dares to bare all. It throws light on the pending issue of child’s psychology; something that is going bad will definitely end up badly, unless of course, there is a miracle, which, fortunately, doesn’t happen with the child in the film as it would have put this movie under a named category, in other words, the movie has no genre. Yes, it’s comical, if one dares to laugh on the day to day truisms, yes, it’s a thriller too, if one at last accepts the fact that every ordinary life is a thriller in itself, yes it’s a social movie, if one looks at these characters as indispensable parts of any society.

Talking about realism, the film reminds of the golden era of Hrishikesh Da. All disguises and deceptions (euphemism here) are acknowledged in the ‘civilized’ society up to a certain limit. A thief is not a thief for everyone, for a few, he is a ‘brother’, a lover or even a friend. Chameleons rule the society or at least, that is what they think. They have as much acceptability as any Lucky; they are good or bad, depends upon their ability to avoid foes. Help is not a virtue, it’s a method in which it is kept handy so that it is accessible whenever need arises. The heart doesn’t beat, it thumps, as a result, all necessity becomes urgency and a comfort takes the form of a sinful desire. Even the arrest scene of Happy alias Lucky makes the mockery of the system and makes it clear that although it was not the one that made Lucky a criminal but it didn’t do enough either to avoid him from becoming one. He got the taste of that criminality even before he committed his first theft, which was in the form of his friend’s murder by local goons.