Okay, let’s do some Monkey Baat!

Therersquos a shot in Anurag Kashyaprsquos Bandar opens in theatres June 5 wherein for a split second you notice the indelible ink on Bobby Deolrsquos finger while he jostles inside a lockup hersquos been stuffed into at the police station mdash picked up from home in the middle of the night without sufficient explanation for why hersquos there in the first placeI donrsquot know if this metaphorrsquos intended The ink on the index finger signifies hersquos recently voted in the elections Which is kinda useless if you so easily lose all other democratic rights alongside anyway noBobby plays a hasbeen actor in Bandar Hersquos been accused of rape by a woman he casually dated briefly The law suggests as does this film mdash hersquos guilty until proven innocentBurden of proof rests on the defendant alone What follows is a sickening ordeal with the legal process mdash lockup judicial custody disgrace extortion mediatrial over an undertrial mdash being the punishment itselfThe film hence wholly from the PoV of the male protagonist inverses the gender politics in such a case Bandar is still a political film mdash if you define politics after all as merely a response to systemic injustice of any kindI enjoyed deeply engaging with Bandar for all the lsquomonkey baatrsquo that could come after mdash as with every good film that ought to be conversationstarters first what elseShortly after the screening the producer of Bandar former actor Nikhil Dwivedi Raavan Shor in the City tells me the film originated from an unpublished book mdash I suppose nonfiction mdash that given concerns over privacy he canrsquot reveal its authorNikhil went over with the manuscript to screenwriter Sudip Sharma Paatal Lok Kohrra Next stop Kashyap as director The rest is Bobby DBandar starts with haggard Bobby a Rahul Roy kinda figure performing a popular song from his heyday for a pittance yet humiliated at a Delhi function Somehow this scene harks back to an infamous 2016 event at a Delhi nightclub where lsquoDJ Waale Bobbyrsquo was on the console once mdash belting his hit Bollywood titletrack Gupt on loop when the patrons reportedly demanded refund expecting a wider playlistThatrsquos how the rsquo90s star Bobby briefly got back into the news lost to ravages of time otherwise In the film Bobby speaks eloquently through the worry lines on his forehead If anything you can barely tell between the moment hersquos incarcerated and the life before it spent in the prison of his own faded glory Being accused of rape mdash thatrsquos a verdict in itself mdash is the final nailTo be sure laws on the matter are deeply lopsided Yet theyrsquore aimed at Indiarsquos dark interiors where women even stepping out after dark is deemed a privilege let alone reporting sexual crimesCan laws be misused still Consider my own unrelated stray case Irsquove had three female online stalkers in the past None of whom I know personallyThey could well be the same person Two Irsquove reported to the police mdash while over an offline conversation a cop once wondered aloud what to do No Indian law prevents a woman from stalkingBobbyrsquos Samar in Bandar meets the girl in question on a dating app Newspapers regularly report casualties from casual ties emerging from such platforms in the real world Distrust existsKashyap the king of grime employs the story as a takeoff point to survey inner workings of a MumbaiTaloja jail full of undertrials that feels like such a lived experience mdash that I havenrsquot watched as realistically captured since the Raj Kundra starrer UT69 2023 set in Arthur Road jail surprised me like howTherersquos seldom any respite All actors especially cops almost uniformly shine in Bandar mdash from Sanya Malhotra Samarrsquos sister to Mallu actor Indrajith Sukumaran debuting in HindiItrsquos true that the female complainantrsquos Sapna Pabbi part feels underwritten Thatrsquos also a matter of the picturersquos perspectiveEqually true that since MeToo 2018 there hasnrsquot been any effective Hindi film as a direct response to it while at least a couple of movies have kinda flipped the narrative Section 375 Accused to show another sideBandar codirected by Sakshi Mehta is not a MeToo movie In a way that Sudhir Mishrarsquos workplace film Inkaar 2013 was before the hashtag existedBandarrsquos about a fling gone flop It portrays an anomaly Patriarchy remains the prevailing norm Like a false case false equivalence is also a real concernThe film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival I havenrsquot gauged its public response since Itrsquos easy to tell that could be potentially polarisingIrsquoll tell you what isnrsquot mdash empathy Which is ideally absolutistmdash empty of any distinctions caste religion wealth gender included Yoursquoll feel for Bandar once you connect with Bobbyrsquos character I did all along Some others can always move on mdash not your circus not your monkeyMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper