Chhichhore

Chhichhore (transl. Frivolous) is a 2019 Indian Hindi-language coming-of-age comedy-drama directed by Nitesh Tiwari in association with Piyush Gupta and Nikhil Mehrotra, and produced by Sajid Nadiadwala under Nadiadwala Grandson Entertainment, with Fox Star Studios acquiring the distribution rights. Based on Tiwari's experiences as a student of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, the film stars Sushant Singh Rajput, Shraddha Kapoor, Varun Sharma, Naveen Polishetty (in his Hindi Debut), Tahir Raj Bhasin, Tushar Pandey and Saharsh Kumar Shukla in the lead roles, with Shishir Sharma and Mohammad Samad in supporting roles.

Set parallelly in the 1990s and 2019, Chhichhore tells the story of Aniruddh Pathak, a middle-aged divorced man whose son, Raghav, tries to commit suicide after failing to clear the JEE entrance examination, and who, despite survival, is unwilling to live due to the fear of being branded as a "loser", which makes a desperate Anni recount his own experience to Raghav of his own time at college, wherein he and his five friends too were called 'losers', and how they managed to remove that tag; as he continues along to narrate his story, the other five join their friend and complete the story.

Principal photography commenced in September 2018. Chhichhore was released on 6 September 2019, receiving positive reviews from critics. Earning ₹215 crores (₹2150 million/$28 million) worldwide to emerge as a blockbuster, it went on to receive the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi at the 67th National Film Awards announced in 2021. It also received five nominations at the 65th Filmfare Awards – Best Film, Best Director for Tiwari, Best Story, Best Dialogue and Best Editing. It marks Rajput's penultimate film appearance before his death on 14 June 2020.

Anirudh "Anni" Pathak is a divorced middle-aged man living with his teenage son, Raghav Pathak, an aspiring engineer, who is awaiting the results of his entrance examination in the hope of enrolling in National College of Technology. On the eve of the results, Anni gifts Raghav a bottle of champagne, promising him that they will celebrate his success together, unaware that Raghav is under intense pressure. The bottle of champagne only fuels Raghav's worries as to what will happen if he does not make it. The next day, while checking the results at his friend's apartment, Raghav finds out that he has not qualified for the IIT-JEE exam results and, afraid of being called a "loser", he deliberately slips off the balcony to commit suicide, but survives, although in a fatal state. Anni rushes to the hospital where he tries to comfort his ex-wife, Maya Pathak. She blames Anni for not noticing how much pressure Raghav was under. Dr. Sunit Dev "S. D." Kasbekar informs Maya and Anni that Raghav's condition is deteriorating, as Raghav lacks the will to live. Realizing that his son is afraid of being called a "loser", Anni, who stumbles upon pictures of his college days, begins to recount the tales of his time in college in an attempt to rekindle hope in Raghav, who he wants to believe that his father, too, was once a "loser".

During the recount, the story flashes back to 1992, when it was his first day of college at the National College of Technology campus. Anni is allotted a room in Hostel 4 a.k.a. "H4", which is famous for housing "losers". The occupants of H4 have earned this tag for numerous unknown reasons, one of them being the poorest quality of mess food on the entire campus. Dissatisfied, he applies to change his hostel block, although a clerk informs him that his application might take time. Meanwhile, a senior H4 student, Gurmeet "Sexa" Singh Dhillon, pokes Anni in the butt the first time they meet. Anni was also thinking about the rumors of H4, which really weren't true, and got to notice the seniors, including Sexa, having harmless fun. Still, they soon became friends, with Anni describing Sexa as a hyper-sexual senior who was obsessed with pornography all the time.

Sexa narrates Anni's desperation to change his hostel, and in 1992, during their initial conversation at a canteen, they notice Maya for the first time. At that time, Maya was a popular girl among the boys in the college, but Maya left those boys alone by avoiding them, making Anni avoid her in the process.

As the story returns to the present, Sexa narrates to Anni and Maya during a lunch break how he and a friend named Himanshu "Acid" Deshmukh once received a funny pro-ragging request in 1992 from the father of a fresher named Sundar "Mummy" Shrivastava, a young introvert who is tied to his mother's apron strings and is very dependent on her. At this stage, Mummy joins Sexa in the present day, working as an executive in the United States, which has thickened his accent. When both Anni and Sexa spill news of Acid's arrival, Mummy exclaims to Raghav that Acid is "bad news". Anni then describes Acid as a school topper who began flunking his college tests and developed a bitter, swearing tongue. A brief introduction for Acid soon pans back to Sexa's classmate joining them in the hospital. All of them briefly reminisce about the fun they had in their college days, showing their photo album to Raghav and telling him about Anni's newfound relationship with Maya back then, even as Dr. Kasbekar, time and again, informs them that Raghav's brain is swelling, and his condition doesn't show signs of improvement.

Meanwhile, back in 1992, a super-senior student named Raghuvir "Raggie" Chalkar, a reputed hostelite of Hostel 3 a.k.a. "H3", which is known to be a world-class hostel and the absolute antithesis of H4, fast-tracks Anni's application and offers him to come to H3, but Anni has a sudden change of heart while discussing this with Maya, later rejecting the offer, much to the chagrin of Raggie, who reveals that Derek D'Souza, a well-known athlete and the super-senior of H4, has been "rotting" for the past three years after having similarly rejected a previous offer.