There was a time when I laughed because I didn’t understand the words. Then I laughed because I did. Later, I started noticing what Rancho was actually trying to prove, and I found myself questioning the way the lesson was delivered in the first place.

The first time, I just laughed as a child. I had no idea what Chatur was saying. That was probably what made it so funny. He constantly says “balatkar” where the speech is supposed to say “chamatkar”, and everyone around him starts laughing. I didn’t know what “balatkar” meant either, so the scene was very simple. Some funny guy saying strange things. Everyone was laughing and I laughed along with them. There was no thought about rote learning, language barriers or humiliation. Rancho had played a prank and Chatur had fallen into it.

That is the whole point of the prank. Chatur doesn’t need to understand the speech. He needs to remember it. Rancho changes the words and Chatur reproduces them without understanding the language.

That is also why the scene is important to the larger argument of 3 Idiots. Rancho is trying to show the absurdity of learning something purely for the sake of reproducing it. Chatur is the perfect example of this system, where he does the same thing. At this stage, the scene seemed perfectly constructed.

But then I started feeling sorry for Chatur.

The problem is that Chatur isn’t in on the joke. He doesn’t know the words’ meanings. He doesn’t know why the entire university is laughing. He is simply delivering the speech he memorised, and that makes the prank harder to see as completely harmless.

This becomes particularly relevant because the film establishes that Hindi isn’t Chatur’s strongest language. He was born in Uganda and studied in Pondicherry. Rancho knows that Chatur relies on memorisation precisely because he doesn’t fully understand the language. So the prank isn’t about rote learning anymore. It is about using someone’s linguistic weakness to publicly humiliate him.

And Chatur’s humiliation doesn’t end with laughter. He is beaten by Viru Sahastrabuddhe in front of the entire university. So at this point, we have to question how much humiliation of a person is necessary to teach someone else a lesson about rote learning. Rancho wanted to teach Raju something, but it is Chatur who actually paid the price.

And then there’s the word itself.

The central joke is built around the word “balatkar”, meaning rape. The word is repeated several times while the audience laughs. Women in the audience are shown laughing as well. The film is clearly presenting it as a joke. But when you stop and think about it, everything about this scene, the speech, how the joke works and how it is shown, is wrong in so many ways. It reinforces social violence at the same time that it is supposedly criticising another kind of violence.

And years later, when I watched 3 Idiots again, I actually started liking Chatur’s character more than the other three idiots. Because what Chatur does in the end shows how much of a nice person he actually is.

He wants to take revenge but not in the way we expect a movie antagonist to. He doesn’t try to destroy Rancho’s life. Instead, he decides that he will become successful and return one day to prove Rancho wrong. He makes a bet with Rancho that ten years later, on 5th September, they will meet again and see who has achieved more.

And he returns as a successful businessman. He worked extraordinarily hard. He kept the promise he made ten years ago. Ultimately, he was not a failure. The people who humiliated him had to recognise him because he had become successful enough that they couldn’t ignore him.

But the irony of the movie is that even after Chatur did the right thing, made himself better, proved his brilliance and even kind of helped them find their friend after everything they had done to him, what do they do?

They drag him along, tie him up in his own car, take his expensive suit without permission and travel through several cities looking for Rancho.

So the moral of the story?

Don’t be an idiot.

Be Chatur.