top of page

By:

Kiran D. Tare

21 August 2024 at 4:53:13 pm

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...

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 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.

Sands of Secession

Correspondent
Jan 11
3 min read

A Saudi–Emirati rift, not Yemen’s civil war, is now shaping the fate of the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest state.

Yemen has never lacked for factions, but rarely have its internal quarrels so nakedly mirrored the rivalries of its foreign patrons. The latest drama in the south where forces loyal to Yemen’s internationally recognised government have pushed out the Southern Transitional Council (STC) from the vast provinces of Hadramout and al-Mahra seems like a routine reshuffling of power in a country accustomed to chaos on the surface. But in fact, it marks the open unravelling of the Saudi-Emirati condominium that has underwritten the war since 2015.


Rashad al-Alimi, head of Yemen’s Saudi-backed Presidential Leadership Council, declared that government forces had retaken the two eastern provinces and that all armed groups would now operate under the command of the Saudi-led coalition. That pronouncement was meant less for Yemenis than for foreign ears. Hadramout and al-Mahra account for nearly half of Yemen’s landmass and abut Saudi Arabia’s long, porous border. Control of them gives Riyadh a strategic glacis against Houthi infiltration and Iranian influence. Losing them to the STC - a militia-cum-political movement backed by the United Arab Emirates - had been a humiliation. Regaining them was send a message that Saudi Arabia, and not Abu Dhabi, calls the shots in Yemen’s east.


Yet in Aden, the STC’s bastion, thousands poured onto the streets waving the flag of the old People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, which existed as a Marxist state until unification in 1990. Their chants were aimed not at the Houthis, who still control the capital, Sanaa, but at Saudi Arabia and the government it sponsors. The STC’s demand is simple and combustible: the resurrection of an independent South Yemen. Its leaders have long argued that unification brought neglect and plunder by northern elites. Many southerners agree. What has changed is that this grievance has become entangled with a regional power struggle.


Saudi Arabia and the UAE went to war together to prevent the Houthis, an Iran-aligned movement, from dominating Yemen. But their visions for the country have diverged. Riyadh wants a pliant, nominally unified Yemen that secures its southern border. Abu Dhabi, more commercially minded, has built a network of proxy militias along Yemen’s coast and islands, from Aden to Socotra, securing shipping lanes and ports. The STC is the most prominent of these proxies. For the UAE, a friendly, semi-autonomous south offers leverage over trade routes in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. For Saudi Arabia, it threatens to fragment a neighbour it wants to stabilise.


The drama surrounding Aidarous al-Zubaidi, the STC’s elusive leader, underlines how poisonous this rivalry has become. Expelled from Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council and accused of treason, Mr Zubaidi failed to turn up for talks in Riyadh. Saudi officials allege that Emirati officers spirited him out, first by boat to Somalia and then by military aircraft to Abu Dhabi. The UAE denies wrongdoing.


The STC’s Riyadh-based delegation has since announced the group’s dissolution, citing internal rifts and regional pressure. Few believe that southern separatism has suddenly evaporated. But the announcement reveals how exposed the STC is without Emirati cover.


None of this brings Yemen any closer to peace. The Houthis remain entrenched in the north, buoyed by Iranian weapons and by Saudi Arabia’s desire to extricate itself from an expensive stalemate. Riyadh has been quietly negotiating with them, even as it cracks down on Emirati-backed secessionists in the south. The war that began as a bid to restore Yemen’s recognised government has become a juggling act: containing Iran, managing the UAE, and avoiding further disintegration.


For Yemenis, the country’s modern history is a cycle of unity and rupture. Unification in 1990 was followed by a southern secession attempt in 1994, crushed by the north. The Arab Spring toppled Ali Abdullah Saleh but unleashed forces that no coalition could control. Today, Yemen is effectively partitioned among the Houthis, the government, and a mosaic of militias.


The latest battles in Hadramout and al-Mahra do not change that fundamental fact. What they do change is the balance among Yemen’s foreign patrons. A Saudi-Emirati divorce would be more destabilising than any local uprising. Without a semblance of coordination between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, Yemen risks becoming not just a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, but a theatre for Gulf rivalries as well.

Comments

bottom of page