Alia Bhatt’s Jigra: Uncovering Important Money Lessons Amid Family Drama

Vasan Bala, who gave us the unforgettable Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota, has a huge budget with Dharma Productions’ Jigra. Alia Bhatt plays Satya, the family’s problem solver – cautious and emotionless, she sends the rich groom’s poor girlfriend to London to have his baby while he marries a chosen rich bride – even though she is “family” she always becomes the poor one herself be a cousin. Her brother Ankur (Vedang Raina), whom she respects, develops financial software.

The family’s wild son, Kabir and Ankur, are sent to a foreign country to sell this software. Hanshi Dao seems to be a land of nineties Hong Kong films (remember Mahesh Bhatt’s Gumrah?). Well, just like it happens in movies, Kabir buys a small bag of cocaine and his rich father’s lawyer makes Ankur take the fall when the police catches them. When Satya realizes that Ankur has been framed and will lose his life, she sets out to free him from a maximum security prison.

If you can forgive every prison motif in every prison break movie and the clever “homage to movies” references in Jigra, there is a very important lesson to be learned about money.

Why you should invest for the long term

In the film, young Satya says to her brother, ‘You have bound Rakhi to me, right?’ That means you are under my protection.’

Satya saves Ankur from tyrants, prevents him from witnessing her father kill himself, tries to protect him from Kabir’s obviously bad company, sets the family patriarch’s office on fire when Ankur is falsely imprisoned, and tries her best at legal action Getting assistance in a country where… drug possession means the death penalty, and when all efforts seem to fail, she sets out on a rescue mission that ends in chaos and mayhem in prison.

The only thing that seems to motivate her to save her brother since childhood is love. Logic and Hindi films do not overlap. The brother is hardly a tender darling who needs saving. It doesn’t seem like a fragile flower housed in a greenhouse. The only redeeming factor in his privileged life is that he has a sister who loves him. His cry, “I’m an orphan!” doesn’t work in this courtroom, and if there had been a mother in the film (any mother, let alone a Jewish one!), she would have used her shoes to knock some sense into the brat .

But he’s like one of those uncles who invested early in a stock that turned out to be a blue chip. His sister Satya. He respects her and loves her. And this love multiplies, so much so that it saves him from a scary prison. When you invest in a promising stock early, you set that investment aside and watch it grow year after year. Just like Satya, investment is your protection during the worst times of your life.

Satya is like the investment you made to “save on a rainy day”. The protection that investing offers will help you become ankur – trying new ideas and investing in newer ventures – while you are protected. It becomes an insurance policy you can cash in, a nest egg that comes in handy when everything seems to be going wrong.

The film is as predictable as two plus two equals four. They grin as Zanjeer’s knife sharpening song plays in the background as Satya plans the ‘rescue’. You’re wondering which movie inspired the scene where rebels stage an accident to stop and put stuff in fuel tanks. You cringe when you hear John Woo, Wong Kar-wai and Park Chan-wook listed as prisoners and want to be annoyed at the unnecessary cleverness of “Yaari hai imaan” on the playlist while Manoj Pahwa does his Madagascar Van drives to save Satya and the three boys… Eight weeks later, when the film hits Netflix, you’ll be glad they invested in a fast-forward button so you can see the mean prison guard who’s in every scene Canvas devours!

Manisha Lakhe is a poet, film critic, traveler, founder of Caferati – an online writers’ forum, host of Mumbai’s oldest open mic and teaches advertising, films and communication. She can be reached on Twitter at @manishalakhe.