i don't even know wtf this is. bollywood elementary school AU.
So in a comment to wasabi_girl1 I made a strange comparison regarding Akshay Kumar and Katrina Kaif (something about students) and then jokingly added, "Bollywood elementary school AU!".
And then I ..wrote it?
star pupils, chapter 1/??
bollywood elementary school AU
most rl pairings included
pg
warning for: CRACK. overly clever 12 year olds. unrealistic age differences (meaning for example, all four khans are in the same year and the same age). not grounded in the indian education system in the least. occasional hindi.
His feet don't reach the floor when he sits in that big chair and stares at the toes of his shoes, frowning. From the corner of his eye he can see his mum's disapproving looks when he starts moving his legs as if he's on a swing. She corrects her saree and looks at his teacher, smiling.
"Mrs Malini--"
"Please, just call me Hema-ji."
"Hema-ji, it's not that he is a bad student. He simply has occasional trouble with being attentive in class."
This is his mother's way of saying he could do the work necessary, but he is busy thinking of things more important than Chemistry or English.
"I am in complete agreement, Mrs Khan, but he has to start paying attention in classes. He is a very serious boy, but his head is constantly elsewhere. If he could just get that head into studying, I'm sure he would be a very good pupil."
She smiles at him. He folds his arms and looks away.
"On the other hand," Hema-ji continues, "he does do well in some classes, in his own way. Would you like to see the story he wrote in Hindi class when the students were asked to write about how they would change the world?"
His mother is handed a paper a couple of paragraphs of wonky Hindi with the occasional spelling error (hey, nobody's perfect at age 11) and her eyes glance over the title.
"Taare zameen par? What is this about, Aamir?"
He can't frown any longer and grins instead. "Catchy title, hai na?"
His mother merely shakes his head. "I'm sorry, Hema-ji, his father takes him to the cinema sometimes, the boy is becoming obsessed."
"It would star Rukhie and Juhi!" he tells Mrs Malini enthusiastically.
"Would it really?" she asks.
"I'll make sure he does his homework in the future," his mother says apologetically. "And that he won't see any films until he passes his exams."
"Oh I don't know," Mrs Malini says with a smile. "It must be natural to him, Mrs Khan. This is Film City Elementary, after all."
**
Taare zameen par is not the only script Aamir Khan, 11 years old, is working on. They have set up a production company (except it's really only just a little corner of his friend Sallu's father's basement where they set up a desk and some chairs) titled FCE Rebels (FCE stands for Film City Elementary though Aamir assumes that once they enter Junior High, the E will stand for Entertainment). Of course, he and Salman (or Sallu as Aamir most often calls him) have had the occasional argument and scuffle regarding what sort of cinema they ought to be making with their pocket money budgets, as Aamir has true artistic integrity and Salman is more willing to accept anything that comes their way.
Their first scuffle was over one older bully named Dhawan (his first name they never found out), who wanted to make a film with them with dogs and poo or something similarly inane.
"It could've been a funny movie, yaar!" Salman argued. "Plus he had the money to make it. Even brought most of the props!"
"Having a dog who poops is not a secure financial plan," Aamir said and that was that until Salman began shoving and then after about ten minutes of rolling around in dirt, attempting to hit each other, they gave up.
"Okay, we're not making the movie, thik hai?" Salman said.
"I have grass in my ear. And yeah, sure. Our first movie will be good." Aamir offered a smile and Salman returned it.
"I'm glad you didn't hit me in the nose, yaar," Salman quipped. "Could've ended up like Shahrukh."
"If he got a nose like that by somebody punching it, we better not hit his ego anymore!" Aamir joked back and they shared a laugh until a voice from the edge of Salman's yard called both of them out.
"I heard that!" Shahrukh said, making his way over to the other two. "But I also heard you're making movies. So I'm here to star in them."
"Who says we need you?" Aamir asked. "I can act."
"Maybe as Dumbo, mera dost, otherwise nahin, you guys need me."
Aamir frowned but Salman nudged him. "Dude, girls like him."
"Whatever, he can play villain roles at first," Aamir finally said, giving up. "Salman plays heroes. Full stop. End of discussion."
"I can't act, yaar," Sallu said.
"Nevermind," Aamir replied, not looking at Shahrukh's grin, "you'll just have to improvise."
**
"--and I was just like, whyyyy would she want to take a picture with me? She never talks to me, ever. But suddenly now she's my best friend for life and we have to have our school picture taken together and braid each other's hair and I just said, no, nobody's touching my hair, you know? I am really particular about that, because I remember this one time when I was staying with some family in, oh where was it, that place in the mountains, you know, high up, Shyla? Shoola? Shimla! Shimla, that was it, so in Shimla -- Saif, Saif! Are you listening?"
Saif's pencil left the paper and he looked up at his best friend, who had dimples but they weren't showing.
"Of course I'm listening," he says.
"Prove it!" Preity demands.
"'You know, high up, Shyla? Shoola? Shimla! Shimla, that was it, so in Shimla', you happy now?" Saif repeats and Preity smiles, all teeth and dimples.
"Oh Saif, you are the best. Now if I could remember Math like you remember whatever I say.."
"If I could forget what you say like I forget Math.."
"You're so funny," Preity says. "So. In Shimla, what was I saying?"
"I can't remember, I wasn't there."
"You're too funny!"
"So you keep saying."
"So you keep being!"
"Your wish is my command," Saif concludes and Preity smiles and continues talking about Shimla, digressing to That Incident with Auntyji and whatnots.
It's not that Saif doesn't like Preity, he really really does, but he wouldn't mind getting more male friends. He doesn't want to be that boy who hangs out with girls all his life, it's already bad enough at home with Soha breaking all his best action figures, his mother and the two sisters always around, and only ever seeing Dad on TV. He's beginning to get an odd reputation, at school, too. His name is Khan and yet he's never spoken to Aamir or Salman or Shahrukh, the most popular boys in his class, and most people know Saif as Preity's Friend and nothing else.
He doesn't want to be Preity's Friend all his life. Or the boy who other pupils keep singing 'Roop tera mastana' to just because his mother did a movie or two back in the day. Kids can be mean, and when Preity shows up to defend him against boys two years her senior, it only makes matters worse.
Sometimes Saif Ali Khan really hates his life.
And then, other times, like now, when Preity is babbling on about Shimla and her quirky relatives, as they're having a snack on the school yard, a girl from Preity's grade, with really long hair and big eyes, walks past them and smiles at him.
Him.
"Why did Kareena Kapoor just smile at you, yaar?" Preity asks a few moments later. "She used to think boys were yucky last Diwali when Shahid asked her out."
"Maybe she just had a mouth twitch," Saif says, hoping very much she didn't.
**
He doesn't want to go to school. Not today. Too much going on, too many things to organize. They are already three lunch breaks behind schedule on the shooting of FCE Rebels' first production, Dil chahta hai ("What kind of a title is that?" Salman argued initially, "It should be longer. Hum dil de chuke sanam or something." and Shahrukh vehemently disagreed, "Something shorter. Dil se. The long titles never become hits." but in the end Aamir stuck to his guns) and they desperately need a heroine for the movie.
Shahrukh is pushing Juhi Chawla, a lovely girl who Aamir very much likes (likes maybe a bit too much, but he is being very professional about it and thus not hiring her) and Salman instead won't stop talking about a new student who entered the class opposite them, a girl from some South-Indian state who's supposedly very beautiful.
"Juhi can act, who knows if this new girl can even speak Hindi!" Shahrukh argues.
"We'll dub her, koi problem nahin hai," Salman retorts.
"We're doing sync-sound, no dubbing, end of story," Aamir intercepts while rewriting the beginning.
"Are you going to let the villain decide who the heroine is?" Salman asks Aamir.
"Are you going to let him be the hero?" Shahrukh demands.
"I'm going to rewrite the role for Akshay Kumar if both of you don't shut up!" Aamir threatened.
"Him?" Salman says, bewildered. "But he's a scholarship pupil!"
Shahrukh frowns. "So am I!"
"Yeah, yaar, but you're not.. he's.. he's a little weird."
"Unusual for sure," Shahrukh agrees.
"What kind of parents put their kid in karate aged 3?"
"What kind of a kid gets black belt aged 8?"
"What kind of a greeting is kicking the door in when you enter your first class?"
"Well," Aamir says with a mischievious grin, "it's a hero ka entry, that's for certain."
**
Akshay doesn't think much of it when she first starts following him around. But after two weeks of constant dogging, he finally traces his own steps and finds her sitting on her own, with a Walkman and a pair of headphones.
"Mujhse .. kuch khana ... chahiye .. mujhse ..bhukh .. lagi hai," she says in the tiniest voice and strongest accent he's ever heard in his life. "Arre yaar", she continues, repeating it carefully and then it hits him.
His words, his accent she's imitating. He swears beneath his breath and this startles her. She starts babbling in English with the occasional Hindi word thrown in, mispronounced and mangled, and he just looks on.
"Mujhse maaf karo," she says and repeats in English, "forgive me, please. I just need, I just need to learn."
And then she looks at him so sadly he doesn't know how to react. It makes no sense in the world for him to be a teacher of anything, much less language. He doesn't use as much English as the other kids, in fact he uses hardly any, and sometimes he gets in trouble for it. He understands it, most of it, he just doesn't like it. It doesn't fit him, somehow. At home they speak Punjabi, to his friends he speaks Hindi. They live in India, isn't that all he should need?
"Thik hai," he says then, as it looks like she's about to cry. "Matlab, okay."
"You'll teach me Hindi?" she asks, already sounding grateful.
"Call me guruji."
"I'm Katrina," the girl says and sticks out her hand. He shakes it awkwardly.
"Myself Akshay."
"Namasteji," she says and bows a little too fast, a little too down.
But it's a start, he guesses.
**
He hasn't seen Kareena in two days, and she hasn't smiled at him for two days, either. He's bitten his tongue, not asking Preity about Kareena, and instead he's focusing on his other goal of Getting Friends Who Are Not Preity, which is not going well at all.
He's been considering, for a really long time now, just biting the bullet and approaching Akshay, who's in their class but not quite as intimidatingly popular as the Khan Trinity is. Akshay is intimidating in other ways, though, what with the martial arts training and the Punjabi-laden Hindi. Saif knows English and Bengali, and his father reads him Urdu stories whenever abba is around, but Punjabi is not something he grew up with.
There he is, thinking and walking at the same time (clearly never a good idea) and the next thing he knows, there are papers flying in the air, and he and some other boy have nearly knocked each other over. The other one huffs in an annoyed manner and starts gathering the scattered papers, Saif attempting to help him out until he realises who the boy is.
"You're Aamir Khan!"
"No, that's my nephew, I'm actually Imran Khan," Aamir replies, way too sarcastically for a twelve-year-old, Saif thinks.
"I'm sorry, I wasn't looking," Saif says hastily.
"You're blind and I'm Kashmiri?" Aamir asks.
"What?"
"Just a story I'm working on."
Saif picks up a few sheets of paper off the floor. "I'm really sorry about this."
"It's fine, really," Aamir admits. "I should've been paying attention. My head is elsewhere, what with this film and everything."
"You're making a film?"
"Trying to. We're short of a camera, some money and a heroine and my villain thinks he's destined to be a hero and my hero thinks he can't act."
"I see," Saif replies awkwardly.
Then he realises he's actually talking to Aamir Khan. He's having a conversation with somebody who isn't Preity, and it's going pretty well, all things considered and now that he doesn't know how to keep going, so he does the one thing he really shouldn't do.
"You need a heroine? Have you heard of Preity Zinta?" he asks and Aamir frowns.
"Don't think I have," he answers.
"I should've asked, 'have you heard Preity Zinta', because everybody has. She won't stop talking."
Aamir looks interested. "My heroine's kind of like that."
"Then you've found your heroine," Saif says, and smiles, even though he has absolutely no idea what he's doing, what he's getting himself and Preity involved, possibly, possibly not, possibly just making fools of both of them.
And then Aamir smiles back and he feels okay about that, somehow.
TBC
---
OMGWTFBBQ!!!!!! I cannot stop brainstorming this. Abhi and Aish and Rani and Kajol and Munna and Circuit Sanju and Arshad will probably make appearances. And Juhi!
Btw, did you know that actually the three Khans were under the same roof recently when both Shahrukh and Aamir came to Salman's house for Katrina's birthday? How effin' cool is that. Khan OT3 is trueee.
Okay, I better go to bed. I know nobody will read this crazy fic but I really enjoyed writing it. XD
And then I ..wrote it?
star pupils, chapter 1/??
bollywood elementary school AU
most rl pairings included
pg
warning for: CRACK. overly clever 12 year olds. unrealistic age differences (meaning for example, all four khans are in the same year and the same age). not grounded in the indian education system in the least. occasional hindi.
His feet don't reach the floor when he sits in that big chair and stares at the toes of his shoes, frowning. From the corner of his eye he can see his mum's disapproving looks when he starts moving his legs as if he's on a swing. She corrects her saree and looks at his teacher, smiling.
"Mrs Malini--"
"Please, just call me Hema-ji."
"Hema-ji, it's not that he is a bad student. He simply has occasional trouble with being attentive in class."
This is his mother's way of saying he could do the work necessary, but he is busy thinking of things more important than Chemistry or English.
"I am in complete agreement, Mrs Khan, but he has to start paying attention in classes. He is a very serious boy, but his head is constantly elsewhere. If he could just get that head into studying, I'm sure he would be a very good pupil."
She smiles at him. He folds his arms and looks away.
"On the other hand," Hema-ji continues, "he does do well in some classes, in his own way. Would you like to see the story he wrote in Hindi class when the students were asked to write about how they would change the world?"
His mother is handed a paper a couple of paragraphs of wonky Hindi with the occasional spelling error (hey, nobody's perfect at age 11) and her eyes glance over the title.
"Taare zameen par? What is this about, Aamir?"
He can't frown any longer and grins instead. "Catchy title, hai na?"
His mother merely shakes his head. "I'm sorry, Hema-ji, his father takes him to the cinema sometimes, the boy is becoming obsessed."
"It would star Rukhie and Juhi!" he tells Mrs Malini enthusiastically.
"Would it really?" she asks.
"I'll make sure he does his homework in the future," his mother says apologetically. "And that he won't see any films until he passes his exams."
"Oh I don't know," Mrs Malini says with a smile. "It must be natural to him, Mrs Khan. This is Film City Elementary, after all."
**
Taare zameen par is not the only script Aamir Khan, 11 years old, is working on. They have set up a production company (except it's really only just a little corner of his friend Sallu's father's basement where they set up a desk and some chairs) titled FCE Rebels (FCE stands for Film City Elementary though Aamir assumes that once they enter Junior High, the E will stand for Entertainment). Of course, he and Salman (or Sallu as Aamir most often calls him) have had the occasional argument and scuffle regarding what sort of cinema they ought to be making with their pocket money budgets, as Aamir has true artistic integrity and Salman is more willing to accept anything that comes their way.
Their first scuffle was over one older bully named Dhawan (his first name they never found out), who wanted to make a film with them with dogs and poo or something similarly inane.
"It could've been a funny movie, yaar!" Salman argued. "Plus he had the money to make it. Even brought most of the props!"
"Having a dog who poops is not a secure financial plan," Aamir said and that was that until Salman began shoving and then after about ten minutes of rolling around in dirt, attempting to hit each other, they gave up.
"Okay, we're not making the movie, thik hai?" Salman said.
"I have grass in my ear. And yeah, sure. Our first movie will be good." Aamir offered a smile and Salman returned it.
"I'm glad you didn't hit me in the nose, yaar," Salman quipped. "Could've ended up like Shahrukh."
"If he got a nose like that by somebody punching it, we better not hit his ego anymore!" Aamir joked back and they shared a laugh until a voice from the edge of Salman's yard called both of them out.
"I heard that!" Shahrukh said, making his way over to the other two. "But I also heard you're making movies. So I'm here to star in them."
"Who says we need you?" Aamir asked. "I can act."
"Maybe as Dumbo, mera dost, otherwise nahin, you guys need me."
Aamir frowned but Salman nudged him. "Dude, girls like him."
"Whatever, he can play villain roles at first," Aamir finally said, giving up. "Salman plays heroes. Full stop. End of discussion."
"I can't act, yaar," Sallu said.
"Nevermind," Aamir replied, not looking at Shahrukh's grin, "you'll just have to improvise."
**
"--and I was just like, whyyyy would she want to take a picture with me? She never talks to me, ever. But suddenly now she's my best friend for life and we have to have our school picture taken together and braid each other's hair and I just said, no, nobody's touching my hair, you know? I am really particular about that, because I remember this one time when I was staying with some family in, oh where was it, that place in the mountains, you know, high up, Shyla? Shoola? Shimla! Shimla, that was it, so in Shimla -- Saif, Saif! Are you listening?"
Saif's pencil left the paper and he looked up at his best friend, who had dimples but they weren't showing.
"Of course I'm listening," he says.
"Prove it!" Preity demands.
"'You know, high up, Shyla? Shoola? Shimla! Shimla, that was it, so in Shimla', you happy now?" Saif repeats and Preity smiles, all teeth and dimples.
"Oh Saif, you are the best. Now if I could remember Math like you remember whatever I say.."
"If I could forget what you say like I forget Math.."
"You're so funny," Preity says. "So. In Shimla, what was I saying?"
"I can't remember, I wasn't there."
"You're too funny!"
"So you keep saying."
"So you keep being!"
"Your wish is my command," Saif concludes and Preity smiles and continues talking about Shimla, digressing to That Incident with Auntyji and whatnots.
It's not that Saif doesn't like Preity, he really really does, but he wouldn't mind getting more male friends. He doesn't want to be that boy who hangs out with girls all his life, it's already bad enough at home with Soha breaking all his best action figures, his mother and the two sisters always around, and only ever seeing Dad on TV. He's beginning to get an odd reputation, at school, too. His name is Khan and yet he's never spoken to Aamir or Salman or Shahrukh, the most popular boys in his class, and most people know Saif as Preity's Friend and nothing else.
He doesn't want to be Preity's Friend all his life. Or the boy who other pupils keep singing 'Roop tera mastana' to just because his mother did a movie or two back in the day. Kids can be mean, and when Preity shows up to defend him against boys two years her senior, it only makes matters worse.
Sometimes Saif Ali Khan really hates his life.
And then, other times, like now, when Preity is babbling on about Shimla and her quirky relatives, as they're having a snack on the school yard, a girl from Preity's grade, with really long hair and big eyes, walks past them and smiles at him.
Him.
"Why did Kareena Kapoor just smile at you, yaar?" Preity asks a few moments later. "She used to think boys were yucky last Diwali when Shahid asked her out."
"Maybe she just had a mouth twitch," Saif says, hoping very much she didn't.
**
He doesn't want to go to school. Not today. Too much going on, too many things to organize. They are already three lunch breaks behind schedule on the shooting of FCE Rebels' first production, Dil chahta hai ("What kind of a title is that?" Salman argued initially, "It should be longer. Hum dil de chuke sanam or something." and Shahrukh vehemently disagreed, "Something shorter. Dil se. The long titles never become hits." but in the end Aamir stuck to his guns) and they desperately need a heroine for the movie.
Shahrukh is pushing Juhi Chawla, a lovely girl who Aamir very much likes (likes maybe a bit too much, but he is being very professional about it and thus not hiring her) and Salman instead won't stop talking about a new student who entered the class opposite them, a girl from some South-Indian state who's supposedly very beautiful.
"Juhi can act, who knows if this new girl can even speak Hindi!" Shahrukh argues.
"We'll dub her, koi problem nahin hai," Salman retorts.
"We're doing sync-sound, no dubbing, end of story," Aamir intercepts while rewriting the beginning.
"Are you going to let the villain decide who the heroine is?" Salman asks Aamir.
"Are you going to let him be the hero?" Shahrukh demands.
"I'm going to rewrite the role for Akshay Kumar if both of you don't shut up!" Aamir threatened.
"Him?" Salman says, bewildered. "But he's a scholarship pupil!"
Shahrukh frowns. "So am I!"
"Yeah, yaar, but you're not.. he's.. he's a little weird."
"Unusual for sure," Shahrukh agrees.
"What kind of parents put their kid in karate aged 3?"
"What kind of a kid gets black belt aged 8?"
"What kind of a greeting is kicking the door in when you enter your first class?"
"Well," Aamir says with a mischievious grin, "it's a hero ka entry, that's for certain."
**
Akshay doesn't think much of it when she first starts following him around. But after two weeks of constant dogging, he finally traces his own steps and finds her sitting on her own, with a Walkman and a pair of headphones.
"Mujhse .. kuch khana ... chahiye .. mujhse ..bhukh .. lagi hai," she says in the tiniest voice and strongest accent he's ever heard in his life. "Arre yaar", she continues, repeating it carefully and then it hits him.
His words, his accent she's imitating. He swears beneath his breath and this startles her. She starts babbling in English with the occasional Hindi word thrown in, mispronounced and mangled, and he just looks on.
"Mujhse maaf karo," she says and repeats in English, "forgive me, please. I just need, I just need to learn."
And then she looks at him so sadly he doesn't know how to react. It makes no sense in the world for him to be a teacher of anything, much less language. He doesn't use as much English as the other kids, in fact he uses hardly any, and sometimes he gets in trouble for it. He understands it, most of it, he just doesn't like it. It doesn't fit him, somehow. At home they speak Punjabi, to his friends he speaks Hindi. They live in India, isn't that all he should need?
"Thik hai," he says then, as it looks like she's about to cry. "Matlab, okay."
"You'll teach me Hindi?" she asks, already sounding grateful.
"Call me guruji."
"I'm Katrina," the girl says and sticks out her hand. He shakes it awkwardly.
"Myself Akshay."
"Namasteji," she says and bows a little too fast, a little too down.
But it's a start, he guesses.
**
He hasn't seen Kareena in two days, and she hasn't smiled at him for two days, either. He's bitten his tongue, not asking Preity about Kareena, and instead he's focusing on his other goal of Getting Friends Who Are Not Preity, which is not going well at all.
He's been considering, for a really long time now, just biting the bullet and approaching Akshay, who's in their class but not quite as intimidatingly popular as the Khan Trinity is. Akshay is intimidating in other ways, though, what with the martial arts training and the Punjabi-laden Hindi. Saif knows English and Bengali, and his father reads him Urdu stories whenever abba is around, but Punjabi is not something he grew up with.
There he is, thinking and walking at the same time (clearly never a good idea) and the next thing he knows, there are papers flying in the air, and he and some other boy have nearly knocked each other over. The other one huffs in an annoyed manner and starts gathering the scattered papers, Saif attempting to help him out until he realises who the boy is.
"You're Aamir Khan!"
"No, that's my nephew, I'm actually Imran Khan," Aamir replies, way too sarcastically for a twelve-year-old, Saif thinks.
"I'm sorry, I wasn't looking," Saif says hastily.
"You're blind and I'm Kashmiri?" Aamir asks.
"What?"
"Just a story I'm working on."
Saif picks up a few sheets of paper off the floor. "I'm really sorry about this."
"It's fine, really," Aamir admits. "I should've been paying attention. My head is elsewhere, what with this film and everything."
"You're making a film?"
"Trying to. We're short of a camera, some money and a heroine and my villain thinks he's destined to be a hero and my hero thinks he can't act."
"I see," Saif replies awkwardly.
Then he realises he's actually talking to Aamir Khan. He's having a conversation with somebody who isn't Preity, and it's going pretty well, all things considered and now that he doesn't know how to keep going, so he does the one thing he really shouldn't do.
"You need a heroine? Have you heard of Preity Zinta?" he asks and Aamir frowns.
"Don't think I have," he answers.
"I should've asked, 'have you heard Preity Zinta', because everybody has. She won't stop talking."
Aamir looks interested. "My heroine's kind of like that."
"Then you've found your heroine," Saif says, and smiles, even though he has absolutely no idea what he's doing, what he's getting himself and Preity involved, possibly, possibly not, possibly just making fools of both of them.
And then Aamir smiles back and he feels okay about that, somehow.
TBC
---
OMGWTFBBQ!!!!!! I cannot stop brainstorming this. Abhi and Aish and Rani and Kajol and Munna and Circuit Sanju and Arshad will probably make appearances. And Juhi!
Btw, did you know that actually the three Khans were under the same roof recently when both Shahrukh and Aamir came to Salman's house for Katrina's birthday? How effin' cool is that. Khan OT3 is trueee.
Okay, I better go to bed. I know nobody will read this crazy fic but I really enjoyed writing it. XD