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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.

Turning Right, Looking Outward

Correspondent
Feb 9
3 min read

With Sanae Takaichi’s landslide, Tokyo signals a harder line at home, a sharper edge abroad, and a readiness to reshape the Indo-Pacific balance.

Japan does not often deliver political earthquakes. Its post-war democracy has been defined more by continuity than rupture, by factional bargaining within the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) than by sweeping mandates. Now, Sanae Takaichi’s emphatic election victory - an outright majority for the LDP and a two-thirds supermajority with its coalition partner Ishin - comes close to an earthquake. It is not merely a personal triumph for a first-term prime minister. It is a signal that Japan’s strategic centre of gravity is shifting decisively, with consequences that will be felt far beyond Tokyo.


The numbers alone are startling. The LDP crossed the 233-seat threshold for a Lower House majority within hours of polls closing, and Ishin now controls enough seats to override the upper chamber. For a leader who only assumed office in October last year and promptly called a rare winter election, the result confers unusual authority. Japan’s recent history of four prime ministers in roughly three years makes the contrast sharper. Takaichi has not just survived the volatility; she has decisively crushed it.


At home, the mandate frees her to pursue an agenda that blends economic populism with strategic hawkishness. Her pledge to cut the consumption tax has unsettled markets already wary of Japan’s towering public debt. But politically, the move taps into a broader frustration among younger voters, a cohort that has responded to her blunt style, her image as an indefatigable worker, and even the curious pop-cultural phenomenon of ‘sanakatsu’ - the social-media fandom built around her everyday accessories. This reflects a deeper realignment where a conservative leader is managing to mobilise younger voters in a society often caricatured as gerontocratic and risk-averse.


Yet it is on defence and foreign policy that Takaichi’s victory carries the most weight. In office, she has wasted little time accelerating military spending and sharpening Japan’s posture towards China. This builds on trends set in motion under her predecessors, but her tone is more forthright and her ideological instincts more unapologetic. The era in which Japan could rely on strategic ambiguity by being economically entwined with China while sheltering comfortably under America’s security umbrella, is drawing to a close. Takaichi’s Japan is openly preparing for a more contested Indo-Pacific.


Beijing will have noted the scale of her mandate with unease. A Japan with a stable government, rising defence budgets, and parliamentary room to manoeuvre is a more formidable actor in East Asia.


Tokyo’s role in the ‘Quad’ with India, Australia and the United States is likely to deepen, as will cooperation on maritime security and supply-chain resilience. For China, already grappling with a tightening ring of US allies, Takaichi’s victory adds another layer of strategic friction.


Washington, by contrast, sees reassurance. The unusual endorsement she received from President Donald Trump during the campaign underscored how central Japan has become to American strategy in Asia. A stronger, more assertive Tokyo reduces the burden on the US while reinforcing deterrence against China and North Korea.


Beyond the region, the implications are subtler but no less significant. Japan has long been a status quo power, a champion of rules-based trade and multilateralism. Takaichi’s blend of tax cuts, defence expansion and muscular nationalism suggests a recalibration rather than an abandonment of that role. Tokyo is unlikely to retreat from global institutions, but it will press harder for reforms that reflect shifting power balances.


The supermajority also raises the question of constitutional change that Japan has skirted for decades. With the numbers now on her side, Takaichi may be tempted to revisit Article 9, the pacifist clause that has constrained Japan’s military role since 1947. Even incremental revisions would mark a historic break, normalising Japan as a conventional military power at a time when global norms are already under strain.


For now, the message from voters is unmistakable. Japan wants decisiveness after drift. Long seen as cautious to a fault, the country has chosen a leader prepared to test the limits of its post-war inheritance.

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