A new walk in badnaam galli

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It was a different sentiment in 1957 when Guru Dutt, glass in hand, tottered through a badnaam galli. Hurting at “ye ismat ke saude, ye saudon pe takaraar”, he turned, looked straight into the camera and asked:
Zaraa mulk ke rehbaron ko bulao
Ye kooche ye galliyaan, ye manzar dikhao
Jinhen naaz hai Hind par, unko lao
Many in the government thought that they were being summoned to a people’s court, that Sahir Ludhianvi was being very personal.

And so, dutifully, All India Radio didn’t play this Pyaasa classic. There was no official ban; it was just an embarrassment that was best avoided.
It is a different badnaam galli that Mussaddi Lal Tiwari walks into in 2011. He doesn’t have a glass in hand. He is clutching papers with incomprehensible officialise and in his wallet are rupees of different denomination for the chaprasi and the babus. But it is the same sentiment, same question: Jinhe naaz hai Hind par vo kahan hain? Only this time no one seems to be taking it personally.
Am I overstating? Perhaps. But then I wonder, is the tragedy of a young woman who has to sell her body to survive greater than the tragedy of an old, honest man forced to wrench his principles and spit on the dream he saw at the stroke of midnight? Is the impotence of aam aadmi today any less heartbreaking? You tell me.

I AM sure you have seen at least a few episodes of that brilliant TV series Office Office which began airing on Sab TV in 2001. It stopped four years ago but it still hits a nerve. We all saw a little of ourselves in Mussaddi Lal — the man in a khadi shirt and muffler being kicked around in sarkari daftars. And we all recalled an official we had encountered in Bhatia, Pandey, Shulka, Patel, Ushaji. It was funny, but it was true. Our laugh was nervous.
The same team from the small screen brings us Chala Mussaddi, The concept is the same — aam aadmi versus sarkari corruption, but because this is a film, a few baubles have been added and the story tackles more than just one issue.

A 62-YEAR-OLD retired school teacher, now living on his pension, watches his wife die in the ICU ward of the same hospital whose doctors stole and sold her good kidney earlier. Mussaddi Lal doesn’t know this. After cremation, he takes her ashes and goes on a chaar-dham yatra to fulfill her last wish. Tagging along is his son, Bunty (Gaurav Kapoor). Bunty, 28, lives off his father’s pension, and is always asking for more.
Two months later — after encounters with corrupt TTs, leech-like punditjis and fights between father and son — Mussaddi Lal returns to his dark home in Karol Bagh, Delhi. Bijli-pani bills need to be paid, so he goes to his bank. But there is no money in his account. Confused, he goes to the Pension & Accounts Office to check why his pension has not been credited. We know why. While Mussaddi was away, two officials had knocked on his locked door, misunderstood what a neighbour told them, marked him as “deceased” and closed his pension file.
Now Mussaddi must prove that he is not dead. Just like it was in the serial, he encounters the official barricade — gluttonous Bhatia (Manoj Pahwa), shifty Patel (Deven Bhojani), spitting Shukla (Sanjay Mishra), idiot Pandeyji (Hemant Pandey), and the pernicious but omnipresent Madam, Ushaji (Asawari Joshi) — in every office. Different officials, different designations, but same intention. They kick him around, demanding proof, documents, money... Mussaddi is angry, frustrated, lost. But, he decides, he will get his pension and he won’t bribe.

RAJIV MEHRA’S Chala Mussaddi is not bleak, though there are scenes when you will want to wail at the coldblooded system, and at the helplessness of a man who just wants to live in peace — paying his bills on time, waiting in queues without cribbing, all alone but with a misplaced faith in the system and the goodness of people.
The director and writer have conceived and presented the story well. They have filled out the main character, given him a context and many other worries. The film’s twists and turns are engaging and as the story progresses our emotional investment increases. For example, in several scenes we are alone with the officials and are let in on the chakravyuh of documents, stamps, signatures and verifications. We shudder and worry for Mussaddi.
At times the director seems to be struggling to balance comedy and seriousness, but he manages well. Most situations are funny, characters exaggerated, but the apathy of the system real, and the intention of the man behind the sarkari desk all too familiar. At the end, Chala Mussaddi is not a sad film. It’s touching.
All the actors play their parts very well. They have, after all, honed their skills and sharpened their characters over the years. Gaurav Kapoor is good, too. But Chala Mussaddi runs on the power of Pankaj Kapoor. He is the film’s emotional core. He plays Mussaddi Lal with heart-wrenching vulnerability, and we even get fleeing glimpses of the rage we saw in his juror in Ek Ruka Hua Faisla.
Apart from minor glitches in the script and sudden shifts between Delhi and Mumbai, my two main complaints with Chala Mussaddi are about Makrand Deshpande and the background music. Makrand appears at random to sing a song, a la sutradhar, but can barely lip sync. The background music is very loud and often drowns out the dialogue. Both are annoying, unnecessary and stand between us and the film.