| “ | Remember - Life is a race. If you don't run fast enough, someone will overtake you and move faster. | „ |
| ~ Viru Sahastrabuddhe's most famous quote, demonstrating his philosophy. |
Dr. Viru "Virus" Sahastrabuddhe is the main antagonist of the 2009 Indian film 3 Idiots. He is the arrogant and ruthless engineering professor who serves as the director and headmaster of Imperial College of Engineering (ICE). He despises Ranchhoddas Shamaldas "Rancho" Chanchad for always being rebellious and helping his friends to study easier, to which he seeks to prove that Rancho is wrong and everyone must go by the traditional ways. Though not intentionally or inherently evil, his actions has caused a lot of tragedies and atrocities.
He was portrayed by Boman Irani.
Personality[]
Viru is best known for his arrogance, always believing in the traditional ways and hates being the second best. He teaches this to his students, believing that it will push them to try their best. This also extents to his family, as he forces his daughter Pia to marry Suhas Tandon against her will, although Rancho rescues her from it. A man of culture, Viru likes to listen the opera music and treasures his mustache above all, stating that without it, he feels like wearing nothing.
A strict disciplinarian, he has pushed his son and two of his students, Joy Lobo and Raju Rastogi into suicide (although the latter survives). Although all of them are unintentional, he refuses to admit his part in them. This leads to Rancho vowing to challenge Viru, causing a lot of trouble during Rancho's time in ICE. After Viru expels Rancho and the latter's friends from the college for attempted cheating, Pia reveals to him that his son (who is also her brother) committed suicide because he forced him to carry his dream instead of his own. After Rancho helps his daughter-in-law Mona give birth to her son safely, Viru finally admits defeat and wishes for his grandson to pursue a career of his choice.
Despite redeeming himself, ten years later, Viru still has some traces of his disciplinary ways left, as he forces Pia to marry Suhas again, although this is also because Suhas claims to have changed and Pia never telling her family about falling in love with Rancho (who at the time was assumed to be missing). That said, upon realizing that Raju, Farhan and Millimetre (the ICE helped) are rescuing her from the wedding. While understandably displeased, he makes little to no effort to stop them, showing that he has indeed changed his ways.
Biography[]
Viru is the headmaster of the ICE university. Every day, he likes to listen to opera music and let his personal assistant Govind take care of him while he sleeps. He first appears at the first day of school ceremony, giving his students a speech about how life is like a cuckoo nest, and so everyone must try their best to achieve the number one status. One day, a student Joy Lobo approaches him, having built a small plane, and Viru tells Joy's father that he has been denied graduation due to failing to submit his project. This puts Joy into depression as he throws his plane into a trash can. Although Rancho, whose passion for engineering is similar to Joy's, fixes and completes it, Joy committs suicide, devastating his father.
In the funeral, Rancho says that it was the stress that the school put Joy under that pushed the latter to suicide, however Viru refuses to admit it. To mock Rancho in front of his students, he challenges the latter to teach engineering, his teaching subject. However Rancho only shows the students the flaw of Viru's ways via a secret test of character before running out from the room, embarrassing Viru. The two's rivalry starts from there on. Viru then writes letters to the families of Rancho's two friends, Farhan and Raju, and tells the two families that Rancho is a bad influence. Both Farhan and Raju's parents force them to stop hanging around Rancho as a result. Farhan refuses, but Raju complies due to his family's poor status and shifts rooms to live with Chatur Ramalingham, an African-born Tamil-blood student from Uganda who is devoted to Viru's ways and learns everything word-for-word by cramming it. During the meetings of Farhan and Raju's families, the trio feels hungry and gatecrash a wedding for dinner. There Rancho meets Pia, who turns out to be Viru's daughter and falls in love with her. Pia is currently in the process of an unwanted arranged marriage by Viru with the snobbish Suhas Tandon. However, thanks to Rancho's help, Pia manages to dump him.
Later, during Teachers' Day, Chatur gives a speech to the Minister of Education so that the latter can continue to sponsor ICE, but Rancho and Farhan have edited obscene words into the speech. Chatur, being born in Uganda having less knowledge of Hindi, uses Hinglish (Writing Hindi in the English lexicon) to write his speech and memorises it. He reads it on the fateful day of the speech and is thus shamed in front of the school and the Minister, who is displeased, much to Viru's anger. Later on, Rancho also has the highest scores in the semester's exam and is thus allowed to sit next to Viru according to the rules, much to Viru and Chatur's disappointment. Rancho then makes a deal with Viru. If Farhan and Raju fail the final exam, Rancho will admit that Viru was right, but if Farhan and Raju can get jobs, Viru will admit that Rancho was right and shave his own prized mustache.
One night, the trio sneak in Viru's house so that Rancho can confess his love for Pia. Before escaping, they piss on his porch, and Viru, having awoken in the nick of time to witness it, manages to see Raju's face as they flee. He is furious and threatens to expel Raju unless he acts as a witness against Rancho and helps decide who to expel - Rancho or Farhan. Unable to seal the fate of his friends who have helped him through many difficult times, Raju jumps through the window in an attempt to commit suicide, but survives and is comatose. Thanks to his friends Rancho and Farhan along with his family's help, Raju recovers and returns to his senses. After this ordeal, both he and Farhan finally secure their jobs. As part of the deal, Govind shaves Viru's mustache during their routine shave, assuming he has consented to it, much to the latter's horror.
Seeking revenge, Viru tries to make the final exam extremely difficult to attempt to prevent Raju from graduating, which would cost him his job offer and to spite Rancho. Knowing this, the trio then invade Viru's office and steal the exam answer key. They later enter a photocopy room and successfully copy the question paper, but Raju refuses to take it as he wants to pass the exam fairly and with his own effort and discards the copy. Unfortunately for them, Viru catches them and expels them from ICE.
But just as the trio are about to leave, Viru's daughter-in-law Mona goes into labour. Viru desperately tries to find paramedics in various hospitals for her, as she was inside his car due to a heavy thunderstorm, but fails. When Rancho, Fahran, and Raju see her inside of the car, the trio help her get out of it and bring her to a pool table inside a workshop, where Viru bashes the trio for taking her away from him, only for his younger daughter Pia to restrain him while they help Mona in delivering her son, Champ. Once Viru witnesses a safely delivered Champ through a device made by Rancho using various engineering concepts, he admits his defeat and gives him a pen used by astronauts in space, which was given to Viru by the previous headmaster of ICE for being the greatest student he had ever seen and decides not to expel the trio from ICE, after which they all successfully graduate.
10 years later, he is seen in Pia's marriage to Suhas, where he is shocked by the fact that Fahran and Raju are at the event to bring her to Rancho, but he decides not to intervene, indicating that he lets them go.
Quotes[]
| “ | A cuckoo bird never makes its own nest. She lays eggs on other birds nests. And when her babies come to the world, what do they do first? They kick out the other eggs from the nest. Competition over. Their life begins with murder. That's nature. Compete. Or die. | „ |
| ~ Viru's speech that demonstrates his philosophy. |
| “ | Who was the first man to step on the moon? Neil Armstrong obviously. We all know that, but who was the second man? Don't waste your time. It's not important. Nobody ever remembers the man who came second. | „ |
| ~ Viru showing how the first place is the only important one. |
| “ | Everything is fair in love and war, and this is World War... 3! | „ |
| ~ Viru plotting to deny Raju's graduation. |
| “ | My Director said: "When you find an extraordinary student..." | „ |
| ~ Viru, finally accepting his defeat by giving his pen to Rancho. |
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- His name is derived from the Indian word Virudh which means "opposition", reflecting the fact that he is the antagonist of the film.
- Ironically, had Rancho, Farhan and Raju left the office sooner, they wouldn't be able to save Mona's son, which would have made Viru indirectly responsible for the possible deaths of both his grandson Champ and his daughter-in-law Mona.
- Viru can be seen as a total opposite of Rancho, since the former's own strict and competitive ideology prevented him from finding other ways to evaluate his students' respective academic competencies. Rancho himself, on the other hand, knows when to find other methods to showcase such type of competency.