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.

New Face of Baloch Insurgency

Kiran D. Tare

Feb 6

3 min read

A female suicide attacker signals how Pakistan’s longest insurgency is mutating and why the state still has no answer.

Shot on a mobile phone in the dark hours before a recent coordinated wave of attacks across Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province, a chilling video has become emblematic of the province’s struggle with the Pakistani state.

It showed a young woman calmly firing at security forces, smiling at the camera and delivering what the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) calls her “final message.” Her name, according to the group, was Hawa Baloch. Her role as a ‘fidayeen’ or suicide attacker marks a grim escalation in one of South Asia’s most enduring insurgencies.

By foregrounding Hawa Baloch’s youth and gender, the BLA has sought to recast its long-running insurgency as something broader and more modern than a peripheral tribal revolt. Her story fits neatly into that narrative. She was reportedly a Gen Z recruit, formally educated, and the daughter of a BLA fighter killed by Pakistani security forces in 2021. In her, the movement is claiming both inheritance and renewal by linking personal grievance to a collective political mythology.

The operation in which she died was among the deadliest crackdown carried out by the Pakistani Army in recent years. Attacks continued across multiple districts including Nushki, Hub, Chaman, Naseerabad, Gwadar and parts of the Makran region. The military claims to have killed more than 130 separatists in counter-operations; the BLA acknowledges losing 18 fighters, including 11 suicide bombers from its elite Majeed Brigade.

Such numbers are contested, as they often are in Balochistan. What is clearer is the symbolic shift embodied by Hawa Baloch. The BLA has used women in attacks before, but rarely with such deliberate visibility. Her video is tightly framed propaganda designed for circulation. It borrows from the playbooks of other militant movements, where women are deployed to shock, to confound security assumptions and to signal ideological commitment.

Hawa Baloch’s own words underline that intent. She speaks not of negotiation or reform, but of sacrifice and inevitability. She urges women to stand alongside male fighters and condemns those she accuses of spying for the state “for a few pennies.”

For Pakistan, her emergence is deeply unsettling. Balochistan is the country’s largest province by area and among its most strategically sensitive. It is rich in minerals and coastline but poor, sparsely populated and long alienated from the centre. Gwadar port, near where Hawa Baloch was killed, is a linchpin of the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor and a symbol of Islamabad’s economic ambitions. It is also a magnet for rebel attacks, precisely because of its strategic value.

Islamabad’s response to the insurgency may have weakened rebel groups tactically but have failed to extinguish the conflict politically. Civilian sympathy for separatists runs deeper than officials admit, sustained by allegations of enforced disappearances, heavy-handed policing and exclusion from resource wealth.

Hawa Baloch’s path into militancy reflects that environment. That an educated young woman would volunteer for a suicide mission suggests a radicalisation shaped by loss, grievance and a sense of closure.

The turn towards female suicide attackers also hints at strain within the movement. Such operations are costly and difficult to sustain and are often used when groups seek attention, escalation or revival. By placing a woman at the centre, the BLA amplifies the psychological impact of its violence, even as it risks narrowing its future options.

Beyond Balochistan, the geopolitical backdrop complicates any resolution. China wants stability for its investments but shows little appetite for engaging local grievances. Pakistan’s economy is fragile, its security establishment overstretched. India looms in Islamabad’s rhetoric as an external hand behind the unrest, while global attention remains limited. The province, and the lives shaped by its conflict, rarely command sustained scrutiny.

Hawa Baloch’s brief, violent prominence reveals instead a conflict hardening into new forms. Her video was intended to unsettle and spur recruitments. It most likely will. But what it ultimately underscores is not the strength of the rebellion, but the enduring failure of the state to offer a political alternative to the young people it continues to lose.

It suggests an insurgency that sees no political pathway forward and a state that still treats a political problem as a purely military one. Until that changes, the war in Balochistan will continue to mutate, finding ever more unsettling ways to remind Pakistan that it is far from over.

From Doctor to Box-Office Disruptor

New Face of Baloch Insurgency

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