When you hear this dialogue, what comes to your mind?

For me, I genuinely pondered about this question for a couple days after seeing this trailer. Which interest: curiosity or perhaps some sort of romantic entity? The mentioned interest turns out as the one you pay with loans: bank interest.

Sarkaru Vaari Paata, an Indian-Telugu cinema featuring Mahesh Babu, Keerthy Suresh, Samuthirakani, and more, shows a story about an Indian banker, named Mahesh, who always makes sure to keep his bank’s money. As a young boy, Mahesh’s family lived a middle-class life in a village. Not uncommon, Mahesh’s family took loans. However, if they possessed the money to pay the banks back within time, they would. With the bank’s continuous demands of the money and the family’s futile begging to extend the deadline, the parents felt no other option but to take away their own lives, leaving Mahesh to survive on his own.

These events not only brought great sadness to Mahesh, but also showed him the importance of material worth, also known as Sarkaru Vaari Paata. Mahesh then works hard to move to America, where he starts his own bank. The main plot begins when a girl, named Kalaavathi, needs money because she loses her funds in a casino. She seduces Mahesh, by dressing up in traditional Indian sari rather than Western clothes (1), and gets Mahesh to loan her money on the account of student loans. The song Kalaavathi, sung by Sid Sriram, acknowledges her beauty (2).

(1)In India, many people think that Americans dress boldly, as they believe that the land of freedom allows everyone and anyone to act as they please. That’s why the movie shows the depiction of someone wearing traditional clothing in America as very unique and desirable.

(2)Songs in India display through the movies. They hold dances within the song and meanings in the context of the movie or everyday life. This song in particular became very famous, holding over 250 million views, lyrical and music video combined, on Youtube.

When Mahesh finds out the truth, he becomes infuriated and confronts Kalaavathi. After many arguments, Kalaavathi threatens to use her father, a huge business magnate in India, and his influence to end Mahesh and his career. Mahesh boldly stands his ground and finally gets most of his money, all but one rupee. Keeping his discipline and morals, Mahesh stubbornly goes all the way back to India to confront the father for his one rupee. However, when the father initially refuses to pay back a single rupee, Mahesh suprisingly demands 10,000 crores (roughly 1.3 billion USD) from him. After many fights, this time literal physical fights, the media finds out about this and confronts the business magnate. After many more fights and songs, including parts where Kalaavathi finds out that she caught feelings for Mahesh, Mahesh then reveals the reason for demanding that much money from such a huge business man. 

It turns out that the huge business magnate committed many money laundering schemes, where he takes huge sums of money from banks, uses some of that money to pay government officials, and helps take down the same banks that lent him money on the “act of corrupt bank employees.” When the banks get seized, the business magnate hides any evidence of him borrowing money, and the banks own insufficient funds to counteract him. One of the bankers who got caught up in this got noticed by Mahesh, in which Mahesh undertook this responsibility to fix this injustice. In the end, Mahesh accomplishes this, making the business magnate pay for what he’s done.

Aside from the movie including incredible dialogues and fight scenes, the overall message of the movie gives a lot of meaning. In India, taking unsecured loans remains a huge problem, as many people’s lives get ruined from taking loans because of the inability to pay them back. While money laundering takes place all over the world from various people, a lot of banking institutions in India possess incomplete security in dealing with people who need loans, resulting in the giving of loans to people with no way of paying back. The movie sends out a message to both banks and the people to be careful when dealing with money because as much as we appreciate it or not, our material worth matters a lot in living a stable life.