"Why should a person always become a doctor or an engineer? What if that person doesn't want to be either?"- D asked me this question while we were watching the Tamil movie "Don". She had earlier watched Nanban/3 idiots as well. I told her that it isn't that way these days and there are various career options available.
Though we both had fun while watching the movie (especially the scenes where SJ Surya aced it with superb voice modulation and body language), there are multiple aspects of the storytelling which I don't agree to.
(1) Talent doesn't arrive overnight in a parcel
In the movie, the hero realizes his talent one fine evening. He is not shown as someone who consciously works towards identifying his talent. Rather, he is shown as someone having fun, with a wish that he would identify his talent in those 4 years of Engineering.
It creates a false hope in the minds of youngsters. Talent doesn't dawn on you overnight, without putting any effort. None of us are born with a preset talent unless we are child prodigy.
As we progress on a particular skill, we eventually identify that we are good at it and then it becomes our talent. I have experienced this multiple times in my life so far.
I was never good at writing in English in my own words. Though I understood the concepts in school, I used to struggle to write on my own. I ended up mugging the text, to avoid this writing challenge. Many of us who think in our native language face this struggle. When I started blogging in 2004, I faced multiple issues - the words were not flowing freely, there were multiple grammatical errors, sentence structuring wasn't clear, and many more. Because of my consistent writing habit over the past 17 years, my writing skill has improved and has now become one of my talents. I see the same pattern, repeating for other skills such as reading, public speaking, and cooking.
A skill becomes your talent ONLY after you have invested conscious time and effort into it. Love what you do until it becomes your talent. Then you will do what you love.
(2) Hitting a child is not an expression of parental LOVE
Many people liked Don because of the emotional short story in the end - "Untold love". For me, that was the most problematic part of the whole movie.
The father character is portrayed as someone who yells at the child, slaps him, hits him violently in his college, pushes him to get 90% and above, doesn't encourage him for anything. He is depicted as a villain throughout the movie. I don't agree with the ending where child violence is justified in the name of love.
As I was watching the initial few scenes, all it reminded me of was the Senthamarai character in the movie "Adhisaya Piravi" and the dialogue he tells Rajnikanth - "Nee ozhukkam ullavanaa varanum nu dhaan onna adikkaren".