"Anukul" is based on a short story of the same name, written by Satyajit Ray in 1976. This film stars Parambrata Chatterjee, Saurabh Shukla, and Kharaj Mukherjee as the main lead. Satyajit Ray was ahead of his time. It is astonishing how Satyajit Ray thought about a story with a robot (sci-fiction) and delivered it with a beautiful meaning, truly a visionary.
Anukul is a sci-fiction movie about a Hindi teacher, Nikunj Chaturvedi, who buys an Android robot (Anukul) to do his household chores. Who would not like to buy a robot programmed to do any human task without overtime and holidays? But Anukul is not any ordinary robot; it can learn the ideologies and ideals that its master follows and take the master as its role model. I have many questions that arose after watching this movie more than twice. At the beginning of the film, the lady (who sold Anukul to Nikunj) insisted Nikunj not treat Anukul as a robot and not refer to him as "it" but call him by his name. We humans who made robots should treat them as equal as us? And the robot can learn from us, our values, what good are we humans that they (robot) acquire knowledge from us? If that is the case, we can teach a robot how to commit a crime without being caught.
The relationship between Anukul and Nikunj, for me, is more like an innocent student and teacher. As Anukul loves to read books, we can see him learn and him trying to understand humans. Then we see the third main lead come into the scene; Ratan, Nikunj's cousin. We can see Ratan as a person who hates robots, mainly because he lost his job to a robot. From here, we can see that most of the android-humans are taking up a wide range of occupations, making humans unemployed. And when Ratan finds that his elder brother hired a robot for doing household chores, he becomes fierce. From here, the plot becomes interesting. We get to know Anukul's rights of a robot; and that it can charge anyone with high electricity if abused or angered.
Then we see Anukul reading the Bhagwat Geetha and getting confused over how brothers try to kill each other, to which Nikunj replies, “Every act is justified by your duty. Even if the act involves doing gruesome things, one can always justify it by the duty. Duty is paramount.”
Anukul is confused and asks about morality, to which Nikunj keeps his hand on his heart and tells Anukul that he will know the right side of justice by following our inner voice or dil. Then we see Nikunj lie about ever hiring an android to the anti-android union head. When Anukul asked the reason for lying, Nikunj replies that the choice of when to lie; also comes from our consciousness.
The climax is something unexpected. Nikunj lost his job to a robot who is more qualified than him. And he later gets to know that he got nothing in form of inheritance from his drunk brother. We can see a transformation in Anukul and Nikunj. For me, the movie has a dark ending. Nikunj knew his brother was high and he would hurt Anukul. But Nikunj did not warn Ratan about the consequences of harming Anukul. He asked Anukul to get coffee for Ratan on purpose. When Nikunj moves to another room, we hear thunder, which is followed; by the death of Ratan. Was it Anukul who killed Ratan, or was it because of the thunder? Did Anukul lie to Nikunj about being abused by Ratan to fulfil his dharma to his master? Earlier in the movie, we see Anukul saying that his dharma is to serve his master, and we also know that he will learn the ideologies of his master. His master taught him two things one duty comes first; second, sometimes it is ok to lie. Anukul followed them both and did what he felt was right. Their dialogue over The Gita and Dharma serves the bigger plot too.
In the end, we see that Nikunj has inherited all the property and Anukul smiling and resting his hand on his heart, which may symbolize that he followed his heart and fulfilled his dharma. The film makes us consider that this is a potential outcome that is coming into reality. It makes us think and question our future and race to survive. What if this is what the future holds for us? Will we be able to survive? What if robots that are more qualified than us take our job? How ironic that we who made them; will end up unemployed because they are more intelligent than us?
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