PK : A character sketch
A humanoid alien lands on Earth naked on a research mission in
Rajasthan but is stranded when the remote control for his spaceship is
stolen. He manages to get the thief's cassette recorder. On the same
day in Bruges, an Indian Hindu woman, Jaggu, meets a Pakistani
Muslim, Sarfaraz, and falls in love with him. Jaggu's father objects to
their relationship, citing religious differences. He consults godman
Tapasvi Maharaj who predicts that Sarfaraz will betray Jaggu.
Determined to prove them wrong, Jaggu asks Sarfaraz to marry her. At
the wedding chapel, she is heartbroken when she receives an unsigned
letter, believing it is from Sarfaraz, calling off the marriage due to
cultural differences.
Jaggu returns to India and becomes a news reporter. She meets the
alien and is intrigued to see him distribute leaflets about the "missing"
God. She earns his trust by rescuing him when he attempts to take
money from a temple's collection box as a refund on God's broken
promises. The alien tells her that he is a 'astronaut' from another
planet. His people know nothing about dressing, religion, or verbal
communication. They transfer ideas by holding hands. The alien learned
to fit in with humans by wearing clothes and using money stolen from
"dancing cars".
In a flashback, after being accidentally hit by a truck, the alien is
befriended by bandmaster Bhairon Singh, who takes him along with his
troop. Bhairon takes him to a brothel, where the alien holds a
prostitute's hand for six hours and thus learns the Bhojpuri language.
Bhairon suggests him that his thief may be in Delhi. The alien leaves for
Delhi. Due to his strange behavior, people assume he is drunk and call
him "peekay" or "PK" (Hindi for drunk); the alien adopts PK as a name
(his people have no language and thus no names).
People tell PK that only "God" can help him find his remote. He
sincerely practices Indian religions, including Hinduism, Sikhism,
Christianity and Islam, attempting to find "God", to no avail. He later
discovers that Tapasvi has his remote, who claims it was a gift from God
and refuses to return it. Jaggu promises PK that she will recover his
remote and he can go back home.
PK conjectures that Tapasvi and other godmen must be dialing a
"wrong number" to communicate with God and are advising the public
to engage in meaningless rituals. Jaggu encourages the public to expose
fraudulent godmen, by sending their videos to her news channel. This
"wrong number" campaign turns into a popular mass movement, to the
dismay of Tapasvi. Meanwhile, Bhairon finds the thief and contacts PK,
telling him that he sold his remote to Tapasvi. PK realizes that Tapasvi
was a fraud all along and that it was not a "wrong number". Bhairon
brings the thief to Delhi, but both die in a terrorist attack.
Tapasvi decides to confront PK on-air. Tapasvi asks PK what the "right
number" is. PK says that "God that created us all" is the only concept
people should believe in and that the other "duplicate Gods" are
artificial. Tapasvi argues, saying that PK is trying to take people away
from their Gods and that they will not stand for their Gods being taken
away. He claims he has a direct connection to God and refers to his
prediction of Sarfaraz's betrayal to try to prove that Muslims are liars.
PK, having absorbed Jaggu's memories earlier, realizes that Sarfaraz did
not write the letter to Jaggu.
Jaggu contacts the Pakistani Embassy in Belgium where Sarfaraz
worked part-time. The embassy tells her that Sarfaraz has been
annoying them by repeatedly asking if they received a call from Delhi,
implying that he still loves Jaggu. That day, Sarfaraz found the same
letter and thought it was from Jaggu, and didn't call her as he
understood she was under family tension. Jaggu and Sarfaraz
reconnect, and Tapasvi is forced by Jaggu's father to return PK's
remote.
Meanwhile, PK has fallen in love with Jaggu but refrains from telling her
because she loves Sarfaraz. Having filled multiple audio tapes with her
voice alone, he takes two suitcases full of tapes and extra batteries
when leaving for home. He lies to Jaggu that the tapes contain a variety
of Earthly noises which he will miss, such as crows and car horns. Jaggu
realizes his love for her by seeing the note he wrote for her earlier but
does not directly confront him about it. PK does not even look back
while going as he didn't want her to see his teary face which will
giveaway that he loves her. After his departure, Jaggu publishes a book
about him, with Sarfaraz and her family assisting. Her father whistles at
her reading, implying that after many years he is very proud of Jaggu.
One year later, PK returns to Earth on a new research mission on
human nature with several other members of his species.He
innocuously explains, “There are two types of God. The first one
created the Universe. He is loving, forgiving, omniscient, protective and
unprejudiced. There is another God whom People created. He is
forgetful, wrathful, prejudiced, and might punish you if you do not
believe in Him or do certain things. The first God encourages love, while
the other God feeds on fear.”
How right this alien is about our God. Entangled in the twisted concept
of religion and our religious customs and traditions, we mortals have
completely forgotten the first God. We have become god-fearing than
god-loving. We do not want to displease God, and thus we behave
according to the moral rules of our religion. There is nothing wrong in
having some concern as to what consequences God might bring upon
our lives if we disobey Him. Nevertheless, problem arises when we turn
into blind religious adherents and start following the rules made by
men (not God) who use God’s name to further their agenda. So blind
we have become in our faith that we have completely forgotten that
God would never want us to kill the innocents, suppress women or
scam people in His name.
The character PK is an alien who has no vices. He has no name, wears
no cloth, and speaks no language. When he lands in our planet Earth,
his remote control is stolen. He cannot go back to his home without it.
In his quest to find the device, he seeks for God because every human
being he meets suggests that only God can help him find it. Finding God
gets too confusing for PK as we humans have made the concept of God
too complicated for aliens. He goes desperately from god to god,
temple to church to mosque so God can return his device. He learns
from the humans that only by pleasing God, he can get his remote
control back. Things get chaotic for PK when he starts mixing different
religious rituals and routines to please the Lord. He is an alien, so he
cannot differentiate between Hindus, Muslims or Christians or a
temple, a church or a mosque. Seeing Hindus offering and breaking a
coconut in a temple, he does the same in a church. He is reprimanded
by the Christians. Seeing Christians drinking wine in a church, he buys a
bottle of wine and enters a mosque. He is nearly killed by the Muslims.
He ends up thinking that God has a multiple personality disorder. As
funny as this scene is in the movie, it has a very profound meaning that
tradition that is sacred in one religion could be equally offensive in
another religion. No wonder why we fight with each other justifying
why our God is better than the others’.
