Pushpa 2: Money lessons from scammy samy’s chaotic, crude story | Mint

Why is Pushpa locked away in a red sandalwood shipping container for 40 days with just a book (instead of Duolingo) in Japan? Why do Japanese goons have guns? Was that first fight at Yokohama port only staged so that Pushpa could say, ‘I’ve gone international’? Why is there no connection to Japan with the rest of the movie? Where did the bald villain Bhanwar Singh Shkehawat disappear halfway through the movie? Who cares! The men in the audience were treated to the ‘Mera Samy’ song, the ‘click my photo but squash your intentions’ song, a gratuitous sans pallu close up scene of Rashmika Mandana (‘What’s the point, yaar, she’s pregnant!’ some creepy lad said in a theatre already stunned by all the violence), almost rape of a young woman… The movie fails every criteria in a Bechdel test, but will rule the box office I suppose because it’s all so mensch.

What lessons can we learn from a swaggy sandalwood smuggler and an evil cop?

Do not fall in the trap of fraudsters

When Pushpa feels awful that his lads have been beaten (and shot) by the men under orders from SP Shekhawat (Fahadh Faasil) and you almost cheer when he pays off every man at the police station and rescues his men. He is shown to neither care of money nor for power. And that’s a good thing, isn’t it? That’s why you grin each time the cops are tricked by Pushpa. It’s like Tom and Jerry played out on the big screen.

In real life though, when someone tries to scam you, then the consequences are much worse than two boats supposed to be Sri Lankan Coast Guards firing at Fahadh Faasil in a motorboat because he almost crosses a hilariously bad coastal border marked by a line of buoys you’d see marking lanes in your local swimming pool during races.

From cryptocurrency scams to internet scams to loans by phone scams you have to protect your hard earned money at all times. No matter how often you are told to never share your bank details with unknown numbers who offer you everything from a dream car to millions transferred to your account, you will be tempted.

Ever since you wrote your first email, there have been ‘Help me, I’m a Nigerian prince in exile and want to give you millions for helping me park my money in your account’ email scams. They just want to help innocent, good hearted folk give up their money. These days you will receive calls with offers of personal loans should you wish to fix your bad credit with a small fee paid upfront. If you have even wondered about the word ‘crypto’, you will discover new ways of being scammed out of your money.

Most of us are inexperienced with investing in cryptocurrency. And that means we are easy prey to those who would help themselves not just with our passwords and other personal information but money simply because we don’t know enough about blockchain fees, exchange fees and other processing fees. Imagine losing that crypto key (it’s a usb stick with a protected password) or forgetting those horrendously long alphanumeric passwords that make that key work…The best advice is to educate yourself with all the nuances and pitfalls of this new money. You’d be surprised how many otherwise sane people fall for these scams called pig-butchering. Ponzi schemes and charity scams are many, and the only way to be one step ahead of these scammers is being informed.

Learning about trading strategies, technical analysis, conditional orders and figuring out how crypto markets work takes time. Do not jump headlong into it just because you watched some social media post (or took a weekend crash course).

If you’re informed, then Phishing scams are as easily recognisable as Pushpa’s hand gesture. In a weak moment, you share your personal information unwittingly to someone offering you a loan, or persuade you to give to a recognisable charity or a person who has fallen on bad times, and that’s enough to make you a victim of the many phishing scams around. People find themselves holding a huge amount of debt because they have scammers take out huge loans in their names, or lose every penny of their savings and more.

Phishers use familiar names, ask you to open links to websites that look official, send you texts and even threaten police or government action for your part in some supposed fraud. Sometimes they even call you asking you to send money immediately because a member of your family has been injured in an accident…Please report such phishing scams to the authorities and yes, don’t forget to change the passwords on your phone, and even bank accounts ever so often. And most important thing to remember, if you have received an email that you cannot independently corroborate, then just do not open any attachments sent to you, or even reply.

Women in Pushpa vs women in real life

Pushpa’s Srivalli cooks mutton for him – loses her temper when he says it’s salty. Srivalli lusts after Pushpa and chooses to disrupt his meetings. Pushpa’s elderly mother is humiliated again and again by the legitimate son of her lover, and stops Pushpa from raising his hand on the ‘elder brother’ because, manners. Pushpa’s household has many women cooking or cleaning or bringing people tea. Pushpa’s niece is kidnapped and molested by baddies who have been absolved of rape. But it takes Pushpa to wear a saree and incite his inner goddess Kali. Why? Because if he has a daughter (Srivalli is pregnant), she would get married and get a legit ‘gotra’ and ‘kul’. A son would only have an illegitimate family name. The baddie in Maldives has a woman nodding in approval at everything the baddie says. To say nothing about the nautch girls who dance to a ‘click my photo’ item song.

In real life, women are smarter than these ridiculous cardboard women who are either crying, or lustful or need saving. Here is a list of women in the real world of finance that should inspire you. Geraldine Weiss – the grande dame of dividends, Muriel Siebert the first woman owned member of the NYSE, Abby Cohen the investment strategist – her list of achievements is incredible, Abigail Johnson of Fidelity, Lubna Olayan, Zhang Xin of SOHO, the real estate tycoon, Oprah, Beyonce, Ariana Huffington and yes, even Taylor Swift. You would learn many money lessons from their lives. And some day our movies would stop failing every Bechdel test there is.

Pushpa 2 will be a hit because people are looking for ‘massy entertainers’. If you are one of those, you will spend three hours and twenty minutes of your lives wondering where to buy those shiny embroidered shirts and shoes. And perhaps somewhere when watching this film on some OTT platform at a later date, you will find a small instance when you’ll imagine me as Col. Nathan Jessep from A Few Good Men who’s standing guard, watching terrible movies so you won’t have to! 

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