Vikrant Massey character Manoj in Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s 12th Fail and Rajkummar Rao’s titular character in Amit V Masurkar’s Newton (2017) may suffer from the same issue: Imaandari pe ghamand (being proud of their integrity). But Manoj has more chinks in his armor. an inconsistency in his integrity that stems from a lack of self-love.
Manoj has been leading Shraddha on to believe that he’s an aeronautics engineer because the aspiring Chambal 12th fail guy in him wants to appear at par with the more educated well-off Mussoorie girl that he’s fallen for. Vikrant Massey When Shraddha discovers he’s a BA graduate instead, she recedes into her shell despite Manoj’s insistence that he was about to tell her.
Manoj then turns away his attention from the love life he screwed up to prepare for the IAS Mains exam, only to screw it up after a silly mistake. After that setback, he decides to pursue his love life again, dropping by the door of Shraddha’s Mussoorie home to say ‘I love you.’ However, she doesn’t take the abrupt resurfacing too kindly and shoos him away with her house help.
When Shraddha returns to their coaching center in Delhi to apologize to Manoj, he asks her to wait till his IAS Prelims. She’s taken aback by the reluctance but wishes him luck. She realizes that her dismissal of him the last time may have given him the impression that she doesn’t want to commit to him because he’s a failure. But the truth is that she distanced herself from him because he compromised on the primary quality that attracted her to him: integrity.
