Varun Grover had his first Chinese meal back in 1990, after he earned his maiden salary of Rs 50. He was a ten-year-old boy, whose short fiction was published in a children’s magazine in Dehradun. In 34 years since that meal, Grover has emerged as one of the sharpest, gentlest creative minds in the industry. But his acclaim and abilities can be traced back to the piece he wrote, which was a sequel to an already published story. He didn’t like the original end, so he rewrote a fresh story and turned it around. It was the birth of a storyteller.
“It was a big high to see your byline which the world was reading!” Grover recalls about the time his name was printed in the local Hindi magazine Bal Hans, years before his title would become synonym with quality for cinephiles. “My younger brother and I ate Chinese with that money, and I still had money left so we bought more books.”
Days before the release of his directorial debut All India Rank, the writer-lyricist sat down to chat with Indianexpress.com over a Zoom call to talk about his semi-autobiographical film, which puts focus on a young boy preparing for the highly competitive IIT entrance exam. The boy is modelled on Grover but with one significant tweak– which makes it imperative to understand who Grover is, before unwrapping what has he made.
Shaping a storyteller
Grover was born to a school-teacher mother and an army engineer father in Himachal Pradesh. Since the father had a transferable job, the family was always on the move, changing cities, from Dehradun, Lucknow, Chandigarh to Kurukshetra. What remained constant in all the uprooting, was his father’s love for books, which was passed on to the children.
“My father would come from office by 6 PM, and he would read till the lights went out. He provided a lot of books to me and my younger brother. We grew up on a lot of Hindi books, comics, novellas, that shaped my life. I started writing quit early,” the writer says.
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Growing up with working parents meant a lot of freedom for the Grover siblings. His mom and dad had “their independent worlds”– she would come home and check exams papers while he would be involved in his reading and listening to music. The family had a lot of audio cassettes at home, so the two brothers got enough time to “explore” their world.
“That shaped me as a storyteller. Because other kinds in the class wouldn’t read, I would love to narrate them books like Robinson Crusoe, Three Musketeers and Hindi books of that time. That was one of the reasons I became a filmmaker eventually.”
Flashback to the present
All India Rank, which releases on February 23, follows a story that was brewing inside Varun Grover a decade before he even wrote its first draft in 2014. The film borrows from his time at Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), where he studied civil engineering. The years in college were preceded by a tough IIT coaching around the same time as depicted in the film–1998.
“I went for the coaching in Lucknow. It was a tough competition and a stressful year. I cracked the exam, with a low rank sure. But I was not too happy about it. When I went to college, I suddenly felt, ‘Why am I not ecstatic? I cracked one of the toughest exams in the country and now it should sort my life out, but why wasn’t that happening?’ I kept thinking if I want to be an engineer, why did I even write this exam. My parents never pushed me into it! I just chose this path, that I will sit for IIT and took so much stress.”
Grover realised that his decision was a result of a silent but steady “brainwashing” which happens in the society, where students are “pushed into the system.” That became the crux of what he wanted to say, and All India Rank started taking shape in his head.
“I wanted to examine why parents feel obligated to send their kids into this machinery. I wanted to do something about that time of my life and connect it with a dysfunctional family dealing with their own issues. What I also figured was that it is not just the kid who writes an exam, it is the entire family writing that exam. That was an aspect which really excited me to tell it.”
At IIT BHU, Grover was one of the toppers in class with his overall CGPA around 8.2, a score he humbly brags was “very good.” But the irony was, he was a bright student who never liked what he was studying. Because of Grover’s academic bent and discipline in life, he eventually did well. What he excelled in and enjoyed passionately, were extracurricular activities like theatre, writing plays, poetry and managing the college magazine.
“In the film, my lead is in complete contrast to how I was as a student. I wanted to show a regular, ordinary students, which most of the students are. They are neither the toppers nor the back benchers– a huge chunk of the class is made up of average students. If they apply themselves well, they can ace, if not, they can fall back. Most of the students are disinterested and I wanted to have that as the representative kid in the film.”
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All India Rank’s 17-year-old lead character Vivek is not someone whose dreams are being crushed by the system. Unlike the coming-of-age Udaan, All India Rank doesn’t fire through with the angst of a boy who wants to be an artiste but isn’t allowed to be.
“In this case, it is his identity and the choice to stay clueless that is crushed by the system, that’s what I wanted to explore,” Grover says and adds how real life stories and people from his coaching and BHU days have morphed as characters in All India Rank.
IIT pass, but 12th Fail
In 2014, when Varun Grover finished writing Neeraj Ghaywan’s Masaan–and the filmmaker was on recce– the writer found himself with an interval of three-four months. Grover finally got down to write the first draft of what would become All India Rank. He always wanted to direct the film and was clear that if he could direct only one movie in his life, it would be this.
“I was that sure, but at the same time, I wasn’t sure if I can direct. It took me a while to convince myself that I should be directing. At one point, I made a list of directors that I can give the script to. Nitesh Tiwari was one of them, because I thought he went to IIT so he would understand what the story is about! But I never took it to the next stage of contacting someone that I’ve a script and if they could direct.”
But deep in his heart, Grover knew that he was capable enough to direct. The belief intensified when he came on board Sacred Games as a writer and executive producer. “I consciously spent a lot of time on the sets, edit, sound, multiple filmmaking departments to understand the process, learn and feel confident. After season one and two of the show, I was confident.”
Writer Jaideep Sahani, who had read the script in 2014, sent it to Sriram Raghavan after Andhadhun. When the film became a hit, Sriram and Matchbox wanted to expand and back “non Sriram Raghavan films”. The result was Avinash Arun’s Three of Us, Vasan Bala’s Monica O My Darling and All India Rank.
Despite a successful meeting with Raghavan in December 2019, where the filmmaker had agreed to present the film, its production faced a setback with COVID. When Grover finished his labour of love, it was a promotional song from another film last year, which came out of nowhere and jolted him. Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s 12th Fail, starring Vikrant Massey.
“I was so stressed when I saw the first teaser of 12th Fail, it did not even mention that it was about UPSC. They had dropped the song ‘Restart’ and it looked like IIT coaching, period, similar concerns about the traps of success industries. I read the name, and it was Vidhu Vinod Chopra! I thought now I am scre**d. He is a huge filmmaker, and I am his fan! I thought if he is making something then where do we stand.”
But Grover didn’t worry for too long, as 12th Fail was a film about success while All India Rank was focused on critiquing the system and the coming-of-age of parents. “When the actual trailer dropped, I thought thankfully it was an entirely different world, story, and intent! Then I was relaxed. When I saw the film, I loved it a lot.”
Grover now gears up for a new challenge in his career with All India Rank–a film for which he wrote eight drafts. Writing and re-writing comes naturally to him anyway, as he recalls the life changing story that earned him his first Chinese meal. The original published story was about a boy, who nurses an injured bird, which flies away after healing.
Grover kept crying after the end, wondering why did the bird fly away. One afternoon, when he was unwell and alone at home, surrounded by books and audio cassettes that were integral to the Grover household, he thought about a happy ending. In this one, the boy meets the bird several years later– they recognize each other, he talks about his day at school, the bird listens and then a camaraderie is formed.
“My parents read it and without telling me, my father sent it to the magazine, and they published it! Truth be told, I wrote it for my happiness, for I had finally found closure,” he signs off.
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