Varun Grover had already spent weeks doing media interviews around All India Rank, his debut feature film, before he sat down to talk with Raghu Karnad. The two of them agreed on a different kind of talk.
Three themes from the film – beyond just exams and placements – became their prompts for three short but penetrating conversations.
Grover is a stand-up comedian, lyricist, film writer and now director, whose creations have been milestones in the past decade of popular culture. They include the script of Masaan (2015), of Sacred Games (2018) and the live tours of his group show, ‘Aisi Taisi Democracy’.
All India Rank is Grover’s nostalgic coming-of-age story set in the late nineties, the early days of India’s IIT admissions mania. Reviewing the film in The Wire, Tatsam Mukherjee says, “Where Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s film [Twelfth Fail] went after catharsis, Grover’s film seems to be grappling with larger questions.”
Here are three mini-conversations, about sex, violence, and dreaming, as they figure in Grover’s film, in our culture and in real life.
