Barah Aana: The Money's Worth review

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In eastern Uttar Pradesh, there is a Mritak Sangh - the Association of the Dead - founded by Lal Bihari Mritak. And it is no joke. Lal Bihari, born in 1961 in Azamgarh district, went to apply for a bank loan in 1976, only to find that he had been officially declared "dead". From 1976 to 1994, he continued to be "dead", before he could win back his right to be "alive" again after fighting a long legal battle.

Lal Bihari's plight - the result of an avaricious uncle who wanted to usurp the family property (the uncle had bribed the officials to tweak the records and get him declared dead) - was not his alone, as he found out during his struggle to reverse the official records. So, he formed the Mritak Sangh in Azamgarh, reportedly with a membership of over 20,000 members from all over India.
During his struggle, Lal Bihari did everything possible to draw the attention of the powers that be - he held his own funeral, demanded widow's compensation for his wife, and even fought elections against Rajiv Gandhi in 1989 just to prove that he was alive. Now Lal Bihari, who won the Ig Nobel Award in 2003 for his "posthumous" activities, has officially appended the title Mritak to his name to highlight his plight which luckily for him ended. Director-actor Satish Kaushik had even declared some years ago that he would make a film on Lal Bihari, the role to be essayed by Anil Kapoor. Though Kaushik had made the announcement in Delhi in the presence of Lal Bihari at a press conference at a five star hotel, nobody knows what happened to that project.

But Raja Menon has picked up this very interesting premise to set up his film Barah Aana, with Mishra-ji (Naseeruddin Shah) playing the "dead" man. In a way, Mishra-ji's character is symbolic of a whole cross section of people in our urban societies - the so-called "service-industry" people who work at homes as maids, as drivers, as security guards, and so on, whose existence is taken for granted, and who are treated very rarely as decent human beings by the middle or higher class people who employ them and literally lord over them. Quite naturally, Mishra-ji does not have a voice, literally and metaphorically, though he speaks up when he feels that enough is enough.

It is a set of such people who are the protagonists of Menon's film - Mishra the driver, Yadav the security guard and Aman the café waiter. The film is about how the three driven together by the circumstances take to a life which they never intended to be in, and end up sort of enjoying it before things go awry. With the treatment of a comic thriller for most parts, the film though starts off in a different mode, when Mishra finds that he is no more "alive" in the official records, thanks to his brothers' machinations towards usurping the family property. Mishra shifts to Mumbai to survive, and comes into contact with Yadav and Aman, both fighting for survival in their own ways.

Though Menon has created a comic mood, the film occasionally slips into a melancholic mood, as the backgrounds of the characters as well as their aspirations are established. Mishra is almost silent throughout the film, speaking up only towards the end, and Shah's prowess as an actor is in full display in this barely-speaking role, though in a couple of scenes, you are left wondering why he does not speak. However, the showstopper is Vijay Raaz as Yadav. Raaz, appearing for the second time with Shah on the big screen after Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding. He is so natural as the dumb-looking but smart-thinking security guard, with his perfect body language for the rural character dumbfounded by the life in the city, that he could actually pass off as one if he were to appear in that make up in real life. Arjun Mathur, seen recently in Luck By Chance, is, however, the weak link here, but the fault is not his. Aman, the character played by him, has been drawn a little sketchily, and his body language, looks and costumes remain ambiguous. While the backgrounds of the other two protagonists are established well, Aman's character remains undefined to a great extent. Tannishtha Chatterjee, whose performance in Brick Lane established her in the international arena, is kind of wasted here, her role of a young woman of the slums of Dharavi in love with Aman remaining on the fringes. So is the character of Kate, played by Violente Placido, whose affections for Aman remain unjustified thanks to her sudden disappearance from the scene.

Barah Aana, an Indo-Italian production which has travelled the festival circuit, is a film that will more or less leave one happy at the end. But at the same time, it touches upon a few important issues, the most important among them being the need for recognition of the dignity and self-respect of people living in the lower fringes of the society. And yes, Menon cleverly makes a socio-political comment too - by showing that two characters with no first-names - a Mishra (a Brahmin) and a Yadav (a backward community), both in real world separated by a huge social wall, living together with Aman (peace), the character with no surname in a world where ultimately the division is between the rich and poor.