Happy Teacher’s Day: Seriously, We Need More And More Teachers In India Like Hichki’s Naina Mathur!

Recently, Bollywood’s Queen of Hearts, Rani Mukherjee, won the Best Actress Award at the IFFM (Indian Film Festival of Melbourne) for her phenomenal performance as Naina Mathur, a teacher with Tourette syndrome in Hichki. It’s Rani’s first award post being a Mom. And she thoroughly deserved it. I mean wow!  What a brilliant portrayal of a disorder people hardly knew about! Hats off to her!

Hichki threw light on the fact that we need more and more teachers like Naina Mathur in Indian schools. We need a friend more than a teacher who adopts an interesting way of teaching rather than the typical so-called appropriate method. We really do. But do teachers make such efforts nowadays? I don’t think so. They are busy making money in private tuitions rather than teaching properly in class. Rani’s Naina Mathur is like a slap on the face of such money-minded and materialistic teachers.

Besides, our education system, apart from inefficient and corrupt, is so poor that it follows the year after year concept and idea of mugging and then vomiting it all out on the exam paper. It’s all theory based. But Hichki shows that teaching is firstly a highly practical and an out and out creative process. It is something that students should take interest in and enjoy, which will eventually help them discover their inner talent. Then hopefully, Maths and Physics will no longer be that boring or tough and the number of suicides will also be less.

Well, honestly speaking, after her unparalleled performances in Black and Hichki, I think Rani Mukherjee can be an excellent teacher and mentor offscreen too for the actresses of today. No seriously, not joking, those acting lessons wouldn’t hurt at all.

We have to admit that Rani Mukherjee is a bejewelled gift to Bollywood. She is versatile; so versatile that she can play both Babli (Bunty Aur Babli) and Michelle (Black) with equal ease. Whether she plays an undaunted cop with a mission in Mardaani or a determined teacher with a neurological disorder in Hichki, Rani is just effortless, and is anything but a director’s actor. Roles do not need to be tailor-made for her and she lets the characters bring the best out of her rather than the director of the film.

One would still feel that Rani is highly underrated compared to the Vidya Balans, Aishwarya Rais, Priyanka Chopras and Kareena Kapoors, and has still not got the due that she deserves. It still remains to be seen if she will go on to win a Fimfare and a National Award in the Best Actress category for her outstanding acting in Hichki. I hope she does.

Because there may be a Deepika Padukone, there may be an Alia Bhatt, there may be a Kangana Ranaut, but there was, is and will be one and only one Rani Mukherjee…

Period!