Siddhant Chaturvedi’s Yudhra: Unpacking the money lessons hidden in the chaos

Amitabh Bacchan was nicknamed the angry young man because he was fighting against the system in the movies, and despite the ghastly sound effects of ‘dishoom-dishoom’, you smiled because he had the chutzpah of calling the ambulance before he beat up the bad guys. 

Released on National Cinema Day celebrated in India on September 20, Yudhra is the tale of an angry young man savagely mauling baddies and I came away from the theatre wondering whatever had happened to storytelling.

What money lessons could this film teach us?

Should you follow trends?

Bollywood has taken a leaf out of south films where heroes kill baddies savagely and have loud music accompanying the bloodbath. Whether it is Ranbir Kapoor as Animal killing people because of ‘Dad’ or Shahid Kapoor’s act in Bloody Daddy, the killing has many grit their teeth. Yudhra follows that trend and gets us watching real savagery in the name of, ‘He may have anger issues when he grows up because he had a tough oxygen-less five minutes at birth.’ That’s the logic the doctor offers two police officers Rehman and Rathod (played by Ram Kapoor and Gajraj Rao respectively) when Yudhra is born.

A smart investor watching the film will realise that they have to establish Yudhra as an angry young man so they show him beating up kids at school (because they killed his rescued pet), driving his sporty bike recklessly through traffic, beating up young men who taunt his girl and more. You tell yourself that this is called suspension of disbelief as you dive into your black coffee. When it comes to your hard earned money, you cannot blindly suspend your disbelief. Read everything, find out all that you can about the stock you are going to put your money in. ‘Because the trend says so’ cannot be a reason for you to invest.

What to do when the market turns into a bear?

Yudhra is a film that chooses style over substance. The baddies den is like an art director gone crazy (why is a dino skeleton there? Why are all the henchmen dressed like the American Secret Service? When does a medical resident in Portugal find time to play on her keyboard? Why is the poor man’s Vir Das - the villain’s son - wearing a fur coat in Portugal while the heroine is dressed for summer? Why are you not amazed that they play Beethoven when blood spatters on his poster in the music shop where the action sequence number 100 tales place? Why does the hero calmly say ‘bye’ to the heroine, knowing the baddie is in town looking for her?

When the market takes a downturn as the film does, you have to ensure that you don’t take a huge hit like others. You have to have a plan. You must always keep an eye on the cyclical stock return patterns as you have on economic growth and effects of unemployment and so on. In order to survive a bear market, you must know how to adjust your portfolio accordingly. The market will show indications that change is about to happen. Growth stocks are most susceptible to fail in bear markets. 

Ensure that you have invested in value stocks (they too will go down during a huge market fall, but not that much) with lower P/E ratios will bring you dividends and help you in the market downturns. You can learn about options and short selling in order to be prepared for a bull market. But always know that if you have a money manager that you can trust, you do not have to fear a bear market.

This film should have been titled ‘How to Kill Baddies In Ear Splitting, Violent Ways’ does not do us cinephiles any favour. The only thing to celebrate this debacle of a viewing is a consolation prize: I paid only Rs. 99 for the ticket.

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.