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The idea of a female-centric Nepali Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) movie was promising. When it was first announced amid much fanfare in May 2018, public expectation was naturally built. But from the time of the release of the trailer two months ago, troubling questions were already being raised about Namrata Shrestha-starrer “Xira”. The story of “Xira”, directed by debutant Ashutosh Raj Shrestha, is like a Jean Claude Van Damme movie from the late 80s and Akshay Kumar’s Bollywood movies in the late 90s.

A martial-art expert protago­nist seeks revenge from a baddie and in the course displays some physical prowess that keeps the audience entertained. The only difference here: gender roles have been reversed, as our her­oine Xira loses her husband Rao (Anoop Bikram Shahi) to the mob kingpin Raja (Pramod Agra­hari) and his sidekick Bullet (Srijana Regmi).

The audience could have guessed the plot from the trailer. No big deal. What the movie actually promised as the first ever MMA-based film was a ‘feast of fury’ combined with a lot of action-packed sequences. But, alas, gross negligence in many aspects of filmmaking make “Xira” not even worth sitting through its short 1 hr 35 mins length.

With Namrata herself as one of the producers, the technical glitches in the movie are too many to ignore. The VFX, color grading, editing and even cinematography lack the consistency that most new Nepali movies excel in. The screenplay is so loose that it makes a 95-minute film seem lengthier than it is, and the inclusion of a very tacky item number makes matter worse. Can’t understand why Nepali filmmakers choose a zero-figure model to per­form mechanical dance steps in flim­sy clothing when they can actually hire a real dancer for much less. So uncalled for from Namrata and the rest of the crew.

But while Namrata fails in film­making, she makes it up with her acting. As Xira, a professional MMA fighter and wife of policeman Rao, Namrata gives ample life to her char­acter. She takes method acting to the next level in the context of Nepali films and sets a benchmark for oth­er actresses. Namrata has trained hard for “Xira” and her hard-work shows in her action sequences. She jabs, punches, kicks and grapples like a pro and it would be fair to say she is the only Nepali actress who can give a long shot of action sequence without the help of ropes and wires. Kudos to the Gymkhana team who trained her for the movie. They sure did a good job. Debutant Srijana Regmi as “Bullet” also gives a good performance. A popular model with a well-toned physique in real life, Regmi plays a worthy nemesis to “Xira” with her fight­ing skills, stone cold countenance and a body most aspiring models would die for. The men in the movie are all below par though. There’s a lethargy in their acting that doesn’t sit well in an action movie. Maybe it’s the nonchalant approach to just doing what they are paid for in a female-centric film. Even Raymon Das Shrestha—the hunky Nepali actor, RJ/VJ and judge of a reality TV show—fails to impress as “Raman,” a corrupt cop. (He may have a big­ger role in the second installment of the film which is announced in the end.)

The one actor who needs to be individually called out for his under­achieving performance though is Pramod Agrahari. A character actor who has performed in at least half-a-dozen pivotal roles in Nepali films, Agrahari here fails to capitalize on his opportunity to create a formida­ble villain as Raja. He doesn’t seem to grasp the difficulty of portraying the role of the ace villain. He mum­bles his dialogues like someone with a mouthful of tobacco, and his emo­tions never feel real. Raja is a don, but Agrahari is not! .

 Just when the new school of film­makers are using their creativity and ingenuity to break through the shackles of low budgets and lim­ited markets, films like “Hajar Juni Samma” come out to completely destroy your budding faith in the Nepali film industry. Directed by Bikash Raj Acharya (the man behind the overly-stretched movie series “Nai Nabhannu La”), this movie is a disaster.

Films like this are difficult to review because as much as you want to, you have nothing good to say. For a reviewer, the best place to get audi­ence reaction is at the loo during the interval. When everyone is too som­ber even to talk, and yawn through their nature’s call, you know the script has gone badly wrong.

The story of “Hajar Juni Samma” is unoriginal and seems to have been lifted off the trash can of a Bollywood production house in the 90s. Even the logo of its production house evidently takes inspiration from Bollywood biggies Nadiadwala and Grandson Entertainment.

Aryan Sigdel makes a comeback in this film as Siddhanth, a retired singer and now a guitar store own­er in Pokhara, who seems to be super-rich—an oxymoron the film­makers don’t care to explain. (And this is not an isolated quirk.) Any­way, Siddhant lives in Pokhara with his adopted sons Nishant (Salon Basnet) and Atharba (Akhilesh Pradhan). He is also good friends with Avantika (Swastima Khadka), a medical student from Sikkim studying in Pokhara. Despite his chronic coughing, endless smoking and habitual drinking, Siddhant is a good father who wants to find the perfect match for his son Atharba and repeatedly asks Avantika to become his daughter-in-law—despite knowing that the two have nev­er met and Avantika already has a boyfriend.

Now this is a movie you’d want to watch with your female friends, just to see them cringe at the creepy old man trying to find a match for his son. The whole of the first half is devoted to how the father-son trio tries to woo Avantika through­out a long journey. Some of the metaphors and allegories used for women in this film are so belit­tling one wonders why no Kolly­wood feminist has flagged them yet. Either they haven’t watched the movie or they are protective of their own fraternity while they pub­licly bash “Kabir Singh” for being a misogynist.

The long journey we speak of is what the majority of the film is about. Forced by his sons, Siddhant travels to Sikkim to find his lost love Maya (Priyanka Karki) who he had an affair with for the whole of nine days—and all of 14 years ago! Now our filmmakers seem to be from the school of fiction writers who believe a girl can get impregnat­ed from a single intercourse and raise a perfectly healthy child who looks like neither of her parents. They also seem to forget that the age of rapid communication had already begun 14 years ago. Strange­ly enough, our love birds managed to only share each other’s postal address but not phone numbers. The only thing worse they could have done was to use pigeons to ferry their love letters across Sikkim and Pokhara.

So the audience is made to stay put for over two long hours, antic­ipating at least one unexpected scene. But the only twist there is of the audience fidgeting in their seats trying to laugh at Nishant’s forced antics, while desperately trying to find the connection between Athar­ba and Avantika and somehow ‘feel the love’ between Siddhant and Maya. All to no avail .

(Note: We’ll skip the acting part because we don’t want to per­sonally attack the actors. But a hint: it’s way below par, especial­ly in the case of Aryan Sigdel and Akhilesh Pradhan.)

Imagine listening to the late music maestro Narayan Gopal’s recordings on high quality stereo vinyl. The sound of the yesteryears cap­tured and reproduced in the most primitive of the formats where the whole ‘analogness’ of the music is preserved. Now imagine not having to scrounge through other peo­ple’s collections or antic shops to buy them. Instead, you could have them with the click of a button or find them at a convenient spot near you. That’s exactly the intent of the Wild Yak Records—an ini­tiative of three friends who connected with each other through their common love for vinyl and music. Sushil Koirala, Kiran Byan­jankar and Neeraj Prasad Gorkhaly are the men behind the Wild Yak Records, its inception made possible by their common love. They are spread across the globe—Koi­rala is a public health pro­fessional based in Bangkok, Byanjankar is a restaurateur in Chicago, and Gorkhaly is a scientific policy advisor in Washington DC. What also brings these men, all in their early 40s, together is their common root as the rebellious “thrash metal” generation of Kathmandu in the early 90s.

                                                                                                                                                                  Kiran Byanjankar

The seeds of the WYR were planted when Koirala found an entry of a Narayan Gopal record in an online vinyl mar­ketplace a few years ago. He sent an email to the owner asking if he wanted to sell the record. “You will probably have to dig it from my grave because I am going take it with me,” was the reply he got. So he thought, “What if I could produce it myself?” That is why he first made contact with Gorkhaly.

Koirala then took up the task of digging through infor­mation in Kathmandu for the analog media and the rights for Narayan Gopal’s music. Finally, he got in touch with Music Nepal, which owned the rights, sourced the tape, and signed a license agreement.

During the search, Koirala and Gorkhaly were both sur­prised with the neglect of the original analog source of Nepali timeless classics. They then decided to take it a bit further and continue looking for the media and preserve it. Now all that they needed was a “co-conspirator” for their company. “The funny thing was, we needed to find an investor for a project that is likely to lose money,” Koirala says. Gorkhaly then mentioned his Chicago-based friend, with a tagline that “there is someone I know who would do anything for Nepali music”, and that’s how they found Kiran. After many hours of Facetime and after discovering their mutual passion for Nepali music, the trio eventually established the WYR in Chicago in 2018. The company is now legally regis­tered in Nepal.

While the WYR was started to find, remaster and pre­serve classic Nepali music in analogue format and fund future projects via sale of vinyl records, the team dis­covered a gut-wrenching truth about the state of Nepali music. “With the growth of internet, musicians get a lot for exposure and an inexpen­sive platform to share music. But we also learned that it is impossible to monetize [earn profits] from platforms like YouTube, streaming services and sale of music for the vast majority of them,” Koirala says. “The online systems are designed in a way so as to favor big companies and big artists.”

The WYR then thought of a platform to support the sale of their music, in what would be a “fair-share” approach for the Nepali market. Yak­spin.com will make it easier for music fans to support the musicians by directly buying their music. It will also allow musicians to make money so that they can focus on cre­ating more quality music and continue to entertain us all. The WYR is currently working with local partners to create online payment gateways so that Nepalis can pay from their phones and purchase music right from their homes. The fully digi­tal online marketplace will most likely be launched by September-end.

                                                                                                                                                                                                           Sushil Koirala

The WYR’s goal is to be self-sustaining after some ini­tial investments by the own­ers. Again, the priority is not making money but helping Nepali musicians and saving our classic music.

Apart from making vinyl records and creating a plat­form for Nepali musicians to sell their music, the WYR is also producing music for new and upcoming artists. As co-owners of the com­pany, their preferred choice is to produce what their ears like—namely metal, rock, punk, jazz and funk albums. Not that they will not pro­duce other kinds of music; it’s just that they want to maintain the right balance and see no point of working on albums they do not enjoy themselves. They also have a soft spot for original Nepali folk music.

(The first batch of a limited 300-copy records of Narayan Gopal will be ready for ship­ment on December 5, the Narayan Gopal Remembrance Day. It will be available for pre-sale and will be shipped globally through the US postal system) .

“Ididn’t even know I could sing when I was in class 7, a friend of mine played a prank on me and raised my hand when the students at my school were being called for an audition for a district-level inter-school music compe­tition,” recalls singer Shiva Pariyar. “I was then forced to go to the front of the class and sing in front of my teacher and friends. I remember I sang “Ma ta aba risaunchhu boldai boldina” by Kumar Sanu and the teacher was so impressed that he selected me for the competition.” The rest is history. From a school boy who did not know his own talents to an aspiring singer who wanted to settle in life as a music teacher to one of the highest grossing singers in the country, Pari­yar has had a rollercoaster ride. The 37-year-old singer who was born and brought up in Sarlahi has set himself apart from the singers of his genre by continuously explor­ing and experimenting with new sounds.

A devout student of clas­sical music, Pariyar, even in his early stages in the music industry, learnt to read the audience’s mind and infused his knowledge of classical music with the more contem­porary ‘modern Nepali’, folk and electronic music to cre­ate hits like “Kya Daami Bho” and “Pilayo Saathi Le”, among others. As a result, he has become a household name in the country.

Pariyar comes from a family of lower-middle class farmers in Sarlahi and he is not shy to talk about the hardships of his roots. The world of show­biz and glamor is new for the singer from a small village where a life like this was never even dreamt of. “My family always had enough to feed me and my three sisters. But we never had money to spend on luxuries, not even school picnics,” he says. “Never had I thought I’d become a pro­fessional singer.” After win­ning a few competitions in his district, Pariyar got an opportunity to participate in a national level competition. That’s when he realized he could make a comfortable liv­ing with a career in music. But his parents were against the idea because of financial reasons.

So when he was around 16, he ran away from home to Kathmandu to explore the possibilities in music. He worked as a laborer in a paper carton factory to support him­self. After struggling for a cou­ple of years, he went back home. By then the family had accepted his choice, and he managed to convince them to support him for two years in Kathmandu while he learnt music. Pariyar enrolled in the Lalit Kala Campus in 2000 as a music student and also took private lessons from Rabinlal Shrestha and Chandan Kumar Shrestha. He also got a job as a music teacher at a local school and was satisfied with the position for a while. “My highest goal then was to make a living out of music and being a school teacher seemed to be the best option at the time,” Pariyar says.

But then he was struck by the thought of creating music that people would remem­ber him for. Realizing that the audience for classical music was small at the time, he decided to make a ‘mod­ern Nepali’ album. He spent around Rs 300,000 in the stu­dios but the album was never released. “By the time I com­pleted the album, I realized that it had no market at all,” Pariyar says, “What was I to do? My family had supported my dream for so long and that amount was very huge for them. It took me a few years to pay it back.”

The breakthrough for Pari­yar came only in 2005 when he finally managed to release his debut album ‘Mokshya’. The album as a whole did not fare so well but a single from it—“Fewa taal maa saili”—a folk-based song earned him the recognition of a promising singer in the industry.

That was when Pariyar decided he would not let a sin­gle genre decide his musical career. Pariyar kept up with the times and studied con­temporary music on his own to find out what the modern audience wanted. This helped him produce a total of 10 suc­cessful albums so far in multi­ple genres like pop, ‘modern Nepali’, ghazal and classical. From easy-on-the-ear melodi­ous songs to techno and club influenced dance numbers, Pariyar’s repertoire has it all. In his career of almost 15 years, he has managed to win the highest awards for any Nepali musician—namely the glorious Narayan Gopal Yuva Sangeet Puraskaar (2013) and the Rashtriya Yuva Pratibha Samman (2016).

Pariyar is also one of the busiest touring artists in the country who has travelled to Australia, Japan, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Norway among other countries to perform his music. Pariyar is currently preparing for a dou­ble album—his 11th and 12th— titled Shivalaya Part 1 and 2. “Shivalaya 1 will be a thematic album,” he says. “I will be mixing my folk-based compo­sitions with techno music to give continuity in listening to the whole album. I hope this experiment works.”

“The idea is to fuse our tangible heritage like this temple premises with intangible heritage like ethnic music,” says Lochan Rijal, the head of the Kathmandu University’s Department of Music. “We want to restore this place to its former glory and give continuity to its traditions while also creating an environment for pure teaching and learning.”

The ambitious project has only crossed its infancy. The idea of an institution that preserves both ethnic Nepali music and an almost forgotten heritage site is commendable. But there is no shortage of vested interests that are hindering reconstruction. Squatters who have unlawfully taken over the guthi land refuse to move. Some of them are living with their families and some have established businesses within the premises.

Kathmandu University—an autonomous, not-for-profit, self-funding public institution—signed a formal agreement with the Guthi Sansthan in 2016 to use the Tripureshwor Mahadev temple premises for 30 years (five years for construction and 25 years for operation). The condition was that the university would rebuild all the physical properties in the area and give continuity to the temple’s traditions.

The temple property starts from the main Tripureshwor road and extends to the bank of the Bagmati River on the Kathmandu side. The temple itself was built in 1818 AD by Queen Tripura Sundari in the memory of her deceased husband King Rana Bahadur Shah. The queen is also recognized as the first female writer of the country and her other recognizable feats include the construction of a bridge that joined Kathmandu and Lalitpur (in Kunpodole) and commissioning Prime Minister Bhimsen Thapa to build the Dharahara.

On paper, the site, excluding the part of the river bank which KU has the permission to use, is 12 ropanis (approx. 65,700 sq. ft.). But when Rijal, who came up with the idea and took up the responsibility of completing it, began to inspect the area, he found squatters encroaching on most of the property. Around 20-25 families were living within the premises when he started reconstruction in 2016.

Brick by brick
“Many families have since moved,” Rijal says. “But there are a few rigid ones who took us to court. We have had more than half a dozen court cases, all of which we have won,” Rijal says. Moving them out is still difficult because of the pressure from the locals and other communities. He fears the project might not meet its five-year completion deadline despite his team’s
best efforts.

The project began with Rijal’s idea of creating an ideal environment where ethnic Nepali musicians from all over the country could be employed in teaching interested students. At the same time, if the idea caught on, at least one heritage site could be saved as a public institution.
The rebuilding of the Mahadev temple and the relocation of the KU Department of Music to the site is not profit-oriented, Rijal informs. “Gone are the days when people built temples and took care of them out of sheer devotion,” Rijal says. “To preserve a heritage site like this, a public institution needs to be involved. This is the KU’s vision. Moreover, we want to start a movement whereby all of our traditional heritages are protected by institutions that can care for them.”

At KU’s current Department of Music in Bhaktapur, the university permits only 27 students in the Bachelor’s program. For the Master’s, only a handful of students are chosen. KU also accommodates international students and has exchange programs for its own students. The department, when it starts operating from Tripureshwor, aims to enroll around 400 students in different courses. Rijal is also planning a Master’s program where students will research extensively on music from various parts of the country and create an ethnographic Nepali music atlas. The bigger plan is also to devise school curriculums that include Nepali ethnic music and to build learning centers in musical communities across the country.

From near and far

The Department of Archeology estimates resurrecting costs of Rs 290 million. But Rijal intends to complete the project with the Rs 200 million he has. After all, he began the ambitious project in 2016 with only Rs 1.9 million. At the time, Nepali as well as international musicians had organized concerts to collect funds. His PhD supervisors from the University of Massachusetts had also put together some funds. (Rijal is the first Nepali to get a PhD in Ethnomusicology, completed jointly from KU and UMass.)

KU approved his vision and gave him an additional Rs 20 million. He lost no time in getting his dream project started. The Thai government then gave him $1.49 million (roughly Rs 167 million). This Government of Thailand donation to KU’s Department of Music was put together by Thai citizens to help rebuild Nepal after the 2015 earthquake.

“Although we have a sizable budget, we will still took to stick to our budget and time limits. To help the cause, as a project director, I take no remuneration. The only remuneration I get is from my classes at KU,” Rijal says. “But there are people out there who want to ruin this project for their personal benefit.”

Rijal points to a private NGO that operates a folk music museum within the temple premises. The NGO’s contract with the Guthi Sansthan is up. Despite the countless efforts of the university as well as the government to relocate the museum, the owner refuses to do so. The NGO instead filed a lawsuit against KU, which the court has decided in the university’s favor. Yet the NGO continues to stay put and to defame KU.
“They have been spreading rumors that KU is a private organization which is going to misuse guthi property. But how can a university whose chancellor is the country’s prime minister be a private institution?” Rijal asks. “They even claim that I am an anti-Hindu and I am doing all this to destroy the temple’s heritage and promote some other religion.”

But Rijal himself comes from a Brahmin family who have followed Hinduism for generations. As for the traditions of the temple, Rijal informs that the university plans to give continuity to the old tantrik rituals at the temple. KU will also provide accommodations to the pujari family that has traditionally performed the rituals.

Fingers crossed

With technical support from his site supervisor Sushil Rajbhandari—who leads a team of more than 100 workers in both day and night shifts—and the knowledge of heritage expert Rohit Ranjitkar, the project’s chief architect, Rijal stays on site to ensure smooth rebuilding. There have been security issues in the past, but Rijal is determined to carry out his responsibility. Prime Minister KP Oli has himself visited the project site and applauded Rijal’s efforts. But the government is yet to provide security to the site and the workers.
For Rijal, there is nothing more important than completing the rebuilding by the target 2020 timeline.
“I am scared that if we fail to complete the project on time, many stakeholders will lose interest and a great dream will die. I have nothing to take from this project besides the satisfaction that I am involved in saving our country’s tangible and intangible heritages which otherwise might go extinct,” says the 40-year-old Rijal, who is also a passionate musician and one of Nepal’s most awarded singers.
The end goal is not only to preserve the temple while creating a space for musicians to study, but also to change music education. Musicians from local communities given opportunities to teach. “The music school will make our music inclusive. All religion-, race- and caste-based music that had been limited to particular communities will now be open to everyone,” Rijal says. With the right skills, anyone from any background will be able to become a musician or a music teacher, he adds. “The world will then recognize Nepali music as a single entity and Nepali musicians will flourish”

No, he’s not popular or famous. At least not among the wider Nepali audience for whom the genre he plays has almost become obsolete. But for the musicians and the aspiring entrants to Nepali rock, Satish Sthapit is a name they revere. Be it established the live musicians who have been performing in concerts around the country or the beginners who have just started their rounds in Kathmandu’s pub-circuit, Sthapit is a musician they all look up to.

Sthapit, now 47, was born and brought up in Kathmandu. He grew up in the Lagan tole, in close proximity of Basantapur, where he spent his childhood scrounging for cassettes of famous international artists to listen to. After his School Leaving Examination, his friends wanted to learn guitar in the break. Fearing he’d be left out, Sthapit joined the legendary music teacher CB Chhetri’s guitar classes in New Road out of whim, and thus his musical odyssey began.

In 1989, Sthapit joined the local band ‘Vampire’ comprised of his neighborhood friends. “Thrash is what we listened to in those days and thrash is what we started playing,” Sthapit recalls. After playing a few concerts with the band, he decided he would have a new outfit, and with friends who connected heads with him musically, he formed Newaz in 1990. Newaz then released its debut album in 1991 and quickly became one of the most popular bands in Kathmandu’s rock scene.

Newaz played live shows in the pubs of Thamel, along contemporaries who could be counted on fingers. From the early 90s, they also started doing outdoor concerts, which were more common in those days, performing for enthusiastic youngsters of Kathmandu. The band’s popularity was recognized by a group of Finnish filmmakers who made the documentary “Kathmandu Rock N Roll” based on the band members and their lives in Kathmandu. Newaz, supposedly a rock n’roll outfit, saw through and explored for themselves the transition of Kathmandu’s musical taste from heavy metal/thrash to rock to grunge.

From the beginning, as a young boy who just wanted to learn guitar so that he could be with his friends to becoming a rockstar of Kathmandu in his late-teens/early 20s, Sthapit’s passion for music only got stronger. But the more serious he got about music, the more worried he became about not finding proper studio technicians and sound engineers to record, mix and master his music. “I got so sick of asking people to help us record our music and then ending up with unsatisfactory results that I decided to learn sound engineering myself,” says Sthapit.

Sthapit made the big move in 1996. He left for Australia to study sound engineering and to explore more music in the developed country. During his stay there, he managed to get a Bachelor Degrees in Sound Engineering from SAE Sydney and to play music with different bands of the city. “Education and experience” is what he got from his stay there. It would be 17 years before he decided to head back to his native country.

He returned to Nepal in 2013 and revived the band Newaz with its original member Roshan Kansakar on the bass. The band has since been performing original music and a few selected covers in shows and concerts in Kathmandu. Sthapit also started a home studio in the underground basement of his house in Lagan, the same room where he used to rehearse with his bands almost three decades ago.

The ‘studio underground,’ as musicians sometimes refer to his studio without a name, hosts recording artists who are unsigned, non-commercial and are looking to break into the music scene with their creations helped by Sthapit’s production skills. The role of a music producer is the most underestimated job in the Nepali music industry but the awareness for quality is gradually growing.

So Sthapit has been ‘hanging in there,’ as most of his contemporary musicians like to put it. “I come from a time when rock music was associated with drugs and violence,” Sthapit says. “But I’m happy to have been able to continue my music through everything. I feel lucky.” Lucky is what the bands that he cuts out the singles and albums for feel. As well as the audience who get to witness him live in action with his band Newaz.

Sthapit also dons the cap of organizing musical events for genres that commercial event companies do not dare pursue. After successful campaigns with grunge and rock music, 2019 will be the fourth year of his dream project—the Kathmandu Blues and Roots Festival. What started in 2016 as a small fundraiser blues event after the 2015 earthquake has now taken a magnanimous turn. The expected revival of the blues has taken speed and last year’s festival saw a half-a-dozen local blues artists perform alongside an international act in the event with an audience of around 1,500—a big number for the blues. “We hope this year’s event will be even bigger and more people with attend,” says Sthapit.

Publicity stunts, controversies, media debates, and social media hullaballoos can only lead the horse to water. But they can’t make it drink. This holds true in the case of Prakash Kovelamudi’s “Judgementall Hai Kya.” The film created quite a stir in the Indian media, first for its original name (‘Mental Hai Kya’), then for the possible clash of its release with Hrithik Roshan starrer “Super 30” and then for its lead Kangana Ranaut’s public spat with an Indian journalist. “All publicity is good publicity,” they say in show business. But how long till the audience identify with Ranaut and her elder sister’s ploy to grab the limelight by hook or by crook, just in time for her every new release?

The filmmakers bank too much on Ranaut. As a result, her character gets way too much exposure, even at the cost of keeping a healthy pace of the plot. Ranaut plays “Bobby Grewal”, a young woman suffering from acute psychosis resulting from a childhood trauma. In the movie, she shows all the symptoms of psychosis like delusions, hallucinations, mood disturbance, and bizarre behavior. Bobby works as a voice-over artist, dubbing non-Hindi films into Hindi, and typical of her mental illness, she internalizes all the character roles she dubs. They all stay in her head.

A loner living in a big home left to her by her parents, she rents out a section of the house to new tenants—Keshav (Rajkummar Rao) and his wife Reema (Amyra Dastur). That’s when the trouble begins to brew. Bobby is at first obsessed with spying on Keshav and Reema’s personal life and then on proving him a murderer. The twists and turns thereafter is what should have been driving the film. But again, the filmmakers are adamant on taking us inside Bobby’s head and thus the plot is watered down.

Ranaut as the mentally unstable Bobby—who loves to make origami with newspaper-cuttings detailing rapes, murders and domestic violence—carries over the eccentricities of her earlier characters from “Tanu Weds Manu” (2011) and “Queen” (2014). She does wonderfully well in her role as a psychologically challenged yet gifted person, but after all the expectations she has created about her new release, she clearly punches below the weight.

Also, for someone whose Hindi-speaking skills are newly acquired and someone who still struggles with her diction, the role of a Hindi dubbing artist does not come across as entirely believable. Director Kovelamudi pays a bit too much emphasis on glorifying Ranaut’s Bobby. So much so that the other important character of Keshav and the talented actor Rao playing him, are unjustly denied screen-time and character growth.

While Ranaut gobbles up the limelight, Rao subtly aces whatever little screen-time he gets. In “Judgementall Hai Kya”, he plays someone he has never done in his career—a handsome hunk and a ladies’ man. He is not weighed down by past laurels, and has no point to prove, which is perhaps why his new character is a breath of freshness. Although the filmmakers chose to put him on a lower pedestal in the equilibrium in a story that supposedly should have been a battle between two main characters, he holds strong grounds and proves why he is so loved in Bollywood.

Who should watch it?

The movie, albeit erratic, is bearable for someone who likes psychological thrillers. Also for the Balaji audience, producer Ekta Kapoor takes a break from her typical ‘bottleful of glycerin, bucketsful of tears yielding mother-in-law v daughter-in-law struggles’.

But for those non-innocent souls who’ve watched her AltBalaji series like “Gandi Baat” and “X.X.X” you know she’s holding back. But what could she do? This is mainstream Bollywood. 

Movie: Judgementall Hai Kya

Director: Prakash Kovelamudi

Actors: Kangana Ranaut, Rajkummar Rao, Amyra Dastur

Run time: 116 minutes

Rating: 2.5 stars