Cinema as fine divine intervention…

A still from the film ‘Hanuman Ansh’

During the British rule, much like Mahatma Gandhi, Neeb Karori Baba was also kicked out of the first-class train compartment for being brown/Indian.

Unlike how that moment inspired the Mahatma to take on the British, the pushback from Neeb Karori Baba was more immediate + divine. He got off the train. The train/engine, somehow, stopped moving, thereafter.

Eventually, the Baba accepted the apology of the British royal gent, who had thrown him out, laying down several conditions - one of them, being, that the government build a railway station at that very spot, near a village in north India called Nibkarori. Which is where he lived for several years. And how Neeb (‘Neem' in English/West) Karori Baba, born Lakshminarayan, got his name. I know this from watching his biopic, Hanuman Ansh, playing at a theatre near me.

The film opens with a nod to Jawaharlal Nehru, who's just passed away. Neeb Karori Baba (NKB) tells his prime devotee, who was Nehru's personal doctor, that the Prime Minister left without seeing him.

The saint Neeb Karori Baba, on whose life the movie is based. Pic/Wikimedia Commons

The doc at the ashram, in turn, sets out to narrate to the audience, the story of NKB - through legendary anecdotes as flashbacks, following the saint's travels across India, ever since he left home, aged 12.

Whether or not these events, many of them miracles, are apocryphal, ain't the point. The purpose is altogether devotional. They hit the spiritual spot, where it matters. Collective belief is emotionally anchoring for the faithful.

Hanuman Ansh - sincerely written, competently directed by Vishal Chaturvedi, a doc-turned-filmmaker himself - stars actors you've never heard of, let alone watched onscreen; including the lead, Colonel Hunny Bakshi, perhaps cast more for his resemblance to NKB than any career record of his own in showbiz.

The film performed a miracle of sorts at the box-office. An insider at Cinepolis, the company distributing it nationally, tells me, it was made at a budget less than Rs 2 crore, having collected close to R60 crore by week four, when I caught it on a workday show.

NKB passed away 1973. When did I first learn about him? Back in the early '90s, as a kid, when his devotees, all of them white Americans, would regularly drop in to our home in Delhi, through my uncle, during their Indian pilgrimage.

One of whom, and our absolute favourite, was the generous, jovial, Krishna Das (Jeffrey Kagel) - KD, with the D also signifying his incessant love for the desi dal!

KD sang Hindu hymns like a dream, with a touch of soft rock and blues. The voice sounded close to Jim Morrison, on occasion, to me. Back then, he ran the record label, Triloka, with Jai Uttal (Douglas Uttal) as one of his main artistes, blending kirtans with western music genres.

Subsequently, KD became a popular recording artiste himself, singing onstage at the Grammys that he got nominated for in 2013 - presently counting the likes of Virat Kohli, Anushka Sharma as front-row fans.

I've committed to lifelong memory KD's ‘Hey, hey Ram' in multi-track singular vocals, and the Hanuman Chalisa in his hauntingly gravelly timbre, from childhood.

You can hear KD chant ‘Om Namah Shivay' at two crucial passages in Hanuman Ansh, over a fine soundtrack with the wonderfully folksy fusion number, ‘Sab kehte Bhole Nath.'

At the centre, of course, is Colonel Bakshi as NKB, the ever smiling, unassuming sanyasi, and bhakt of Hanuman, seeking oneness with Lord Ram, while meditating across forests and rivers, literally conversing with the flora and fauna.

It's not known how NKB's influence spread among the young Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Julia Roberts, and other American A-list. Hanuman Ansh is the first part of a planned trilogy. The story's merely begun.

NKB's sermon seems quite simple: God doesn't need gold. There should be food for the hungry, and the believer: "Bhookhon ko bhoj, bhakton ko prasad." Likewise, his legend enlarges. Evidently, so has his theatrical audience.

The film opened to footfalls worth Rs 10 lakh. By Day 22, for instance, film trade-smith Taran Adarsh observed/tweeted, "Hanuman Ansh [had] jumped 7,275 per cent - the kind of growth that is unheard of, and unimaginable."

And this is also because the distributors took that long punt, and kept the film playing in theatres, expanding shows - defying the crappy algorithm, which gives one the delusion that the screen is as much looking at you, as you're looking at it! Nope.

The lazy ‘opening weekend' box-office model hasn't been upgraded since decades, while event pictures continually bomb. The exhibition industry ought to build space for the outlier, to keep pace with what's termed WOM (word of mouth). We encounter more such instances, every other month.

For film buffs, the theatre remains the temple of intentional entertainment. It can also, literally, serve as temple for the collective believer. There's a huge history behind it.

Obviously, Hanuman Ansh is not the exception.

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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