This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
PK opens with an alien, played by Aamir Khan, landing in the Rajasthan desert on a research mission. Within hours a thief steals the device that is his only link back to his spaceship, and PK, naked and uncomprehending of Earth's customs, is told by everyone he asks that only God can help him get it back. What follows is literal minded and relentless: PK visits temples, mosques, gurdwaras and churches in turn, imitating the rituals he sees, hoping one will connect him to the god who has his device. He concludes that no single religion has failed him, but that self proclaimed godmen who claim to relay God's own instructions have, a failure PK names the wrong number.
The device turns out to have been found by Tapasvi Maharaj, a popular godman who built a following by claiming it fell from the heavens as a sign of his own divine authority. PK's confrontation with Tapasvi, staged as a televised debate, exposes a specific miracle the godman had predicted as logically impossible, and the film stages this exposure as its climax. Notably, PK never shows a deity on screen: every ritual and act of devotion is filmed as human behavior, including Tapasvi's own staged theatrics. The film's target throughout is not belief itself but the human intermediaries who claim to broker it.
Directed by Rajkumar Hirani and written with Abhijat Joshi, PK became the first Indian film to gross more than one hundred million dollars worldwide and the highest grossing Bollywood release of 2014, alongside strongly positive reviews from Indian critics for Aamir Khan's performance and the film's willingness to turn broad comedy toward a serious subject.