Buddha in a Traffic Jam, Review: Political pottery

“If we need to become a strong country and wish to shine, we need thousands and millions of Buddhas who can fight the traffic jam.”

— Vivek Agnihotri, writer-director, to an Indian publication.

He was trying to explain the meaning of the title, which has nothing to do with either Budhha or traffic, but maybe something to do with jam. No, the scene where a man says that he cannot leave the post of the worshipper at a mini-temple that has been around since the times of Gautama, the Buddha, and join the political extremists, does not count and, obviously, I am not referring to jam of the eating variety. Even symbolically, Agnihotri’s protagonist, modelled after his own self, in his student days, is no Gautama, and if he is indeed stuck in a traffic jam, it is because he is in the wrong lane.

Budhha in a Traffic Jam defies definition, and, which is definitely worse, comprehension. Based on true life incidents (there is no way of verifying how many of the dozen-odd incidents in the movie are indeed culled from reality; one can only vouch for a single case), the film tries to piece together a treatise on all that is wrong in (at least major parts of) India in the new millennium, and then frames blinkered views of the vista by polarised thinkers as its spokespersons.

Vikram Pandit (Arunoday Singh) is a happy-go-lucky management student from a business school. He becomes an overnight sensation, after a successful social media campaign against the radical fundamentalism of moral policing, exemplified by an incident where he was present, in which a bar was raided, and girls, particularly one of them (Aanchal Dwivedi) were targetted. Vikram inadvertently gets drawn into a part of a plot that puts his life at risk, and gets entangled between two facets of India--Socialism/Communism, and Capitalism, both of which are deeply rooted in the India of today.

While his own Professor, Ranjan Batki (Anupam Kher), eulogises the virtues of corruption, he is, unbeknownst to Pandit, a leader of the Naxalites, a rural movement of Maoist believers led, in that region, by man with ambivalent values (Gopal K. Singh), and that uses violence as one of its means to battle for its cause. Batki’s wife, Sheetal, meanwhile, believes that making earthen pots and selling them in millions can raise money to help the poor and deprived in the very region. Pandit does not know what to make of the mysterious Charu Siddhu (Mahie Gill). Then, Professor Ranjan Batki throws him a challenge for yet another internet campaign, devising a marketing effort that would help raise money for his wife’s Pottery Club, which has been denied further government funding. Pandit comes up with a brilliant plan, but then all hell breaks loose.

Vivek Agnihotri (Chocolate -Deep Dark Secrets, Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal, and Hate Story, Zid) was a restless student in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, and later at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. He told the media recently, “I was one of those students that would protest and think the unrest will help create a revolution.” But the film was shot at neither of his alma maters. Eighty per cent of it was shot at the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, with a huge credit, accompanied by a disclaimer, in the opening credits, to that end. Revealing how the idea of the plot germinated, Agnihotri added, “I was delivering a lecture at ISB and students suggested he make a 10-minute short film, which later developed into a full-fledged feature. They collected the funds.” Rohit Malhotra, who worked with him in all his earlier films, has co-written Buddha.

The film uses a real life incident of moral policing in Mangalore, Karnataka, some years ago, where young girls were beaten up in a pub, and later, they protested under an impromptu pink ‘chaddi’ (underwear/panties) campaign. In the film, the garment is substituted by brassières, and the campaigns renamed the Pink Bra Campaign. Dumping this as just an episode, Buddha then borrows heavily from the raved Ashroonchi Zhali Phule (Tears Turned into Flowers), an award-winning Marathi language play by top Indian playwright Vasant Kanetkar. A very good film adaptation was made in 1966, called Aansoo Ban Gaye Phool (same meaning), starring Ashok Kumar and Deb Mukherji. (Read below).

Prologue and epilogue, chapters and flashbacks, disjointed cutting and long monologues...are they experimenting, or playing a sinking/surfacing/hallucinating/posturing game? Not many 10-minute ideas lend themselves to 115-minute narratives. Buddha is one such example. Repetitive classroom lectures by Batki, singing paeans to corruption, are neither funny nor logical. Noble intentions apart, the entire pottery track works brilliantly as a marketing/advertising exercise (Agnihotri has come to cinema from an A&M background), but in the larger context that it is juxtaposed against, it peters down to jiggery-pokery. Batki’s monologue, delivered to a confrontationist Pandit, walking back and forth, and up and down,  inside a amphitheatre type lecture-hall, comes across as improvised of drama technique, done to impart motion in the constrained space, rather than cinematic ‘taking’ style.

Arunoday Singh (Pizza, Ungli, Mr. X) has an impressive physical presence and is comfortable in both English and Hindi. Mahie Gill (Dev D, Dabangg 1/2, Pan Singh Tomar) is passable, dialogue delivery not being her forté. Anupam Kher has a terribly complex character, with traits that range from strong conviction to downright farce (check out his phone conversations with his father). Most other actors would have earned ridicule, while he gets away with just a rap on the knuckles, for the occasions when he goes over-the-top. And sorry, Anupam, your claim that Buddha in a Traffic Jam “...is the most relevant film of our times,” might not find many takers. Pallavi Joshi is seasoned, and the spouse of Vivek Agnihotri, so no surprise that she is good. Nevertheless, what is true of Kher is also true of Joshi.

Anchal Dwivedi (TV) is the oomphy heroine of the pub club episode, and okay for the part. Gopal K Singh (Company, Page 3, Hate Story), as the Naxal chief, is suitably terrifying and an actor to reckon with. Two other actors deserve mention, only I have failed in all my attempts to get their names. One is the man who plays Nannhe Singh and the other is the female drummer in the pub. The man is naturally sinister and menacing, while the girl, who has a non-speaking part, seems to be a real-life musician who is having a ball.

Buddha pays tribute to the legendary Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, and that is laudable.

Now time for some back-story:

*Agnihotri told the media a while ago that India’s Central Board for Film Certification initially wanted to impose 170 cuts before passing the film for release, but later agreed to pass it uncut. Quite incredible, if true!

*They had asked for deletion of the date 26^th January because it marks India’s Republic Day, but withdrew that demand. But then why is the date changed to 24^th January in many places?

*This is perhaps the first film in history, or, at least in a long time, that has been released without any advertising or publicity whatsoever: no TV, no hoardings (billboards), no press ads.

*Events of the last few months, when aggressive political activity and violence rocked several university campuses across India, have been seen as examples of fact imitating fiction.

*Agnihotri has been promoting his film with screenings in campuses, and under the auspices of various industry bodies.

 Rating: **

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD0arec2IaM

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Ashroonchi Zhali Phule

Professor Vidyanand is a morally upright, brilliant professor of mathematics in a college in a town in Maharashtra. He comes across an intransigent student, Lalya, and succeeds in reforming him. Lalya graduates from college and enters the Indian Police Service, as a cadet. Meanwhile, his college is taken over by a local politician, who also has strong criminal links. The politician wants to exploit the college for commercial gain. When Vidyanand resists, the politician subverts Vidyanand's own colleagues, to implicate him falsely under bribery charges.

Vidyanand is removed from his position and is thrown in jail. There, he undergoes a transformation, and comes out a hardened criminal, bent on exacting revenge against those who falsely implicated him. He teams up with his childhood friend turned con-man, Shambhu Mahadev, and puts in motion a plan to defraud the politician who has ruined his life.

In the meantime, Lalya, who is now a senior police officer, is assigned to apprehend Vidyanand. Lalya, oblivious to Vidyanand's transformation, embarks on this mission. Eventually, Vidyanand achieves his revenge, but in the process finds he has lost his moral fibre, and compromised the very values he has stood for. In the end, Vidyanand is apprehended by his protégé, but finds redemption in the fact that his life as a teacher caused his protégé Lalya to reform himself.