From Doctor to Box-Office Disruptor

Vishal Chaturvedi has turned a deeply personal spiritual story into one of 2026’s biggest box-office surprises. In an industry where films routinely arrive with star salaries running into crores, lavish sets and multi-crore marketing campaigns, Hanuman Ansh is a striking anomaly. Made on a shoestring budget reportedly in the region of Rs. 2 crore, the ‘spiritual’ film opened last month to a modest box-office collection. Within weeks, however, audiences began taking a shine to the film with...

min read

Vishal Chaturvedi has turned a deeply personal spiritual story into one of 2026’s biggest box-office surprises. In an industry where films routinely arrive with star salaries running into crores, lavish sets and multi-crore marketing campaigns, Hanuman Ansh is a striking anomaly. Made on a shoestring budget reportedly in the region of Rs. 2 crore, the ‘spiritual’ film opened last month to a modest box-office collection. Within weeks, however, audiences began taking a shine to the film with the phenomenal result that its domestic collections had surged past the Rs. 150 crore mark. Whatever the final tally, the fact that a film made for a fraction of the budgets of mainstream Bollywood productions has emerged as a major commercial success has raised eyebrows. The man responsible for this is Vishal Chaturvedi, a doctor-turned-filmmaker, writer and producer whose route to cinema has been anything but conventional. Chaturvedi was born and brought up in Lucknow and completed his MBBS from Gorakhpur in 2006. While posted in Haldwani that year, he visited Kainchi Dham. It was there that he encountered the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba, the spiritual figure whose life and philosophy would eventually become the foundation of his first feature film. For almost two decades, the thought of making a film around Neem Karoli Baba remained with Chaturvedi. His journey towards Hanuman Ansh itself reportedly took nearly 14 years. Along the way, he left medicine and even gave up music before committing himself fully to filmmaking. What might appear in retrospect as an overnight success was therefore anything but overnight. Hanuman Ansh tells the story of Lakshminarayan, who would later become Neem Karoli Baba. Following his mother’s death, the young Lakshman leaves home in search of God. His journey through forests, temples and villages becomes a gradual renunciation of worldly life and a movement towards spirituality. The film also incorporates episodes associated with Neem Karoli Baba, including the famous account of a British train being stopped after he was forced off it. But perhaps the most revealing part of Chaturvedi’s story is not what he put into the film, but what he deliberately kept out while writing it. He removed digital devices from his room and wrote the story entirely by hand. His assistants subsequently photographed the handwritten pages and converted them into digital form. He spent nearly 45 days writing the first scene alone. For Chaturvedi, however, the first scene was the foundation of the entire film. Once he had found it, the rest of the screenplay came together rapidly, taking another 15 to 20 days. Hanuman Ansh was the culmination of a personal conviction that had survived for nearly 20 years. Its success also raises a larger question about the changing economics of Indian cinema. The film is unlikely to signal the death of stars, spectacle or big budgets. Nor does every low-budget film with a strong idea automatically become a blockbuster. But Hanuman Ansh, alongside other recent successes such as Dhurandhar, points towards something increasingly important: content can create its own market when audiences feel they have discovered something worth talking about. The old model depended heavily on pre-release visibility. The new one increasingly depends on post-release conversation. A film need not necessarily dominate advertising if audiences themselves become its marketing department. That is particularly significant for films operating outside the traditional Bollywood template. Hanuman Ansh does not have the conventional ingredients of a commercial blockbuster. Its subject is spiritual, its central character is not a contemporary superstar and its budget was tiny by industry standards. Yet its audience appears to have expanded precisely because it offered something different. Today, audiences are becoming less willing to accept that the size of a film’s budget determines its value. They can reject an expensive production and embrace a modest one if the latter connects emotionally, culturally or spiritually. For Chaturvedi, the irony is striking. A man who walked away from medicine to pursue filmmaking spent years chasing a story that the mainstream industry apparently did not rush to embrace. That makes Hanuman Ansh’s success more than a box-office curiosity. It is a reminder that while budgets and big-name stars may buy scale and draw attention, the belief among audiences that a particular film is telling a solid story and hence must be seen is priceless. Chaturvedi appears to have spent years building his belief around one story. Judging by the box office receipts, the audience, too, seems to have bought into it.

Corridor of Uncertainty

Commodore S.L. Deshmukh

Mar 23

4 min read

War in Iran has turned the INSTC, India’s most promising trade shortcut, into a strategic liability.

The fog of war in the Middle East has obscured more than battle lines. It has also hidden the quiet unravelling of one of Eurasia’s most ambitious trade experiments: the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC). Conceived at the turn of the millennium as a faster, cheaper artery linking South Asia to Europe, the corridor now finds itself a casualty as collateral damage in a widening Iran embroglio that threatens to redraw the geography of trade.

The INSTC was, on paper, an elegant solution to an old problem. Traditional sea routes from India to Russia and Europe, largely dependent on the Suez Canal, were long, costly and vulnerable to chokepoints. By contrast, the INSTC promised a multimodal shortcut: cargo would move by sea from Mumbai to Iran, then by rail and road across the Iranian plateau to the Caspian Sea, before continuing onward to Russia and beyond. In 2001, India, Iran and Russia signed the foundational agreement, later drawing in a constellation of Eurasian states from Azerbaijan and Armenia to Kazakhstan and Turkey.

The promise was not merely theoretical. When the first commercial consignment traversed the corridor in July 2022, it signalled a breakthrough. Estimates suggested that the INSTC could cut transit times by as much as 40 percent and reduce costs by roughly 30 percent. A journey from Mumbai to Moscow that once took up to two months could be completed in under three weeks. For a trading nation like India, seeking to deepen ties with Russia and Central Asia while hedging against disruptions in maritime routes, the corridor seemed transformative.

Fault Line

Yet infrastructure, however efficient, is only as stable as the geopolitics that underpins it. And here, the INSTC’s fatal vulnerability has been laid bare. Its central node – Iran - has become the epicentre of a widening conflict involving Israel and the United States. What was once envisaged as the “logistical heartland of Eurasia” now resembles a fault line.

The most immediate damage has been physical. A joint American-Israeli strike on March 18 targeted the Iranian port of Bandar Anzali on the Caspian Sea - a key transshipment hub in the INSTC network. The destruction of its customs infrastructure has effectively choked cargo flows through a corridor already struggling with bottlenecks. In a system where efficiency depends on seamless transitions between sea, rail and road, such disruptions are crippling.

The economic consequences have been swift. Shipping delays have lengthened transit times, eroding the very advantage that made the corridor attractive. Alternative routes, whether via the Suez Canal or longer overland paths, are not only slower but also 20–30 percent more expensive. Worse, they lack the capacity to absorb the displaced cargo fully. The result is a squeeze on trade volumes and a rise in costs that ripple through supply chains.

For Russia, a principal beneficiary of the corridor - particularly as it seeks to bypass Western sanctions - the financial toll is mounting. Logistics firms reportedly face monthly losses running into tens of millions of dollars. Freight turnover along the route could fall by as much as a quarter this year. For India, the implications are no less serious. The ambitious target of boosting bilateral trade with Russia to $100bn by 2030 now looks increasingly aspirational.

Insurance markets, ever sensitive to risk, have compounded the problem. The intensification of hostilities in the Gulf, coupled with threats to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, has made underwriting cargo through Iran prohibitively expensive. Some operators have suspended services altogether. In effect, the corridor is being priced out of viability just as much as it is being bombed into disruption.

Geopolitical Statement

The strategic implications are sobering. The INSTC was never merely a trade route; it was a geopolitical statement. For India, it offered a means of asserting strategic autonomy by diversifying trade routes, deepening continental ties, and reducing dependence on maritime chokepoints dominated by rival powers. For Iran, it promised economic integration and relevance. For Russia, it provided a lifeline to global markets.

Now, that shared vision is fraying. Instead of serving as a stabilising economic link, the corridor has become a liability, exposing its users to the vagaries of conflict in one of the world’s most volatile regions. The very geography that once conferred advantage by bridging continents now amplifies risk.

What, then, is to be done? For India, the answer lies not in abandoning the project but in adapting it. A multi-pronged strategy is essential. First, there is a need to strengthen infrastructure and operational control across safer segments of the corridor, ensuring that disruptions in one node do not paralyse the entire network. Second, greater emphasis must be placed on the so-called ‘eastern route,’ which skirts some of the most volatile regions and may offer a more secure, if less direct, alternative.

Investment in technological modernisation is equally critical. Digitised logistics, real-time tracking, and streamlined customs processes can mitigate delays and enhance resilience. At the same time, India must leverage its tradition of strategic autonomy to navigate the geopolitical minefield.

Establishing credible guarantees for cargo safety, possibly through multilateral arrangements involving regional partners, will be key to restoring confidence among shippers and insurers. The involvement of additional stakeholders, from Central Asian republics to European markets, could help distribute risk and reinforce the corridor’s viability.

Finally, institutional innovation may be required. A dedicated task force, bringing together government agencies, industry players and international partners, could provide the coordination needed to respond swiftly to disruptions and chart a long-term course.

The INSTC’s troubles are a reminder that in an interconnected world, infrastructure and geopolitics are inseparable. Trade corridors do not exist in a vacuum; they are embedded in the political landscapes they traverse. When those landscapes shift, the consequences can be profound.

(The author is a retired naval aviation officer and a defence and geopolitical analyst. Views personal.)

1 Comment

Vilas Pandit

Mar 24

Very well explained the impact of Gulf conflict on INSTC and India's geopolitics. Trade to Eurosia was no where highlighted even after 4 weeks of conflict.

Abandoning is not solution for INSTC adaption of other options as suggested by Author needs attention.

Permanent pact with Iran and other Gulf countries for Hormuz and Suez routes must be thought by India.

Ben Gurian canal proposal/ project must be redrawn and implemented as longterm overriding alternative.

Thanks for unique article relevant to Gulf conflict impact.