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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.

The Organisation Man

Writer: Abhijit Mulye
Abhijit Mulye
Nov 12, 2024
2 min read

As the state president of the NCP (SP) Jayant Rajaram Patil has shown that he is the organization man of the party. Highly educated from a foreign university, he sports a rich heritage of a vast number of cooperative institutions founded and built by his father Rajarambapu Patil and has a distinction of being the youngest finance minister of the state.


Born on February 16, 1962, in Sangli, Maharashtra, he was named ‘Jayant,’ meaning victorious, as he was born shortly after his father’s first electoral victory in the state assembly election. He completed his Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute (VJTI) in Mumbai and then pursued a Master’s degree from the New Jersey Institute of Technology in the United States. However, the sudden demise of his father in 1984 brought him back to India, where he took over his father’s cooperative organizations and began his journey in social work.


Jayant Patil’s political career began in earnest in 1990 when he contested the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly elections from the Walwa constituency on an Indian National Congress ticket. He won the election and has since represented the Islampur (formerly Walwa) constituency for over three decades. His political acumen and dedication to public service quickly earned him a reputation as a capable leader.


He was from among the team young politicians handpicked by Sharad Pawar while forming the Nationalist Congress Party in 1999. He became the Finance Minister after winning assembly election in 1999 and served till 2008. He then took on the role of Home Minister from 2008 to 2009, followed by a stint as the Rural Development Minister from 2009 to 2014. In the Uddhav Thackeray-led government, he was Water Resources minister between 2019 and 2022.


Jayant Patil is known for his organizational skills, strategic thinking and ability to navigate complex political landscapes. He was made the state party chief in 2014 when the NCP was at its lowest. He implemented novel initiatives like Rashtravadi Parivar Samvad Yatra to instil confidence among the party cadres, recruited new leadership to replace those who had left the party and brought in new technology-led initiatives to knit the party organization till the booth-level. It was due to his efforts that the party’s position was much better and the party could think of forming government in the state in 2019.


Over the long political journey spanning over three decades, Jayant Patil has acquired skills to carve out his own niche among the other political stalwarts in his home district of Sangli. He also has cordial relations with leaders from opposition camps. He is a man of few words and a soft spoken gentle man. These qualities will be tested in this election.

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