The hustle of average janes and joes

When Manoj Bajpayee embarked on Apoorv Singh Karki’s Sirf Ek Bandaa Kaafi Hai, he couldn’t hazard a guess about the extent of its future success. But he was able to figure out that his lead character—Jodhpur sessions court lawyer PC Solanki, fighting to get justice for Nu, the girl next door, who had been violated by an all-powerful Baba—should somehow connect with the masses. “We knew that if the audience could relate to Solanki, we would be home,” says Bajpayee.

Many will argue that the rightful survivor’s tale in the film has been turned into that of her crusading saviour, but the common man did manage to find his own reflection in Solanki even as the innocent girl’s violation, pain and courage touched a chord. No wonder the “David and Goliath story” as Bajpayee describes it, now has the rare distinction of getting a limited release in cinema halls after a continuing successful digital run, on Zee 5. Normally, it’s the reverse that holds true.
For someone who has played everyman in countless films, Bajpayee categorizes Solanki as a common person who is rather uncommon. He embraces his “Hindi medium” identity, is quirky enough to wear a new shirt to the court with the price tag still on and is a fanboy of the giants of the legal world he is pitted against. At the same time, he is meek and vulnerable.
“He is not larger than life like Amitabh Bachchan. He doesn’t have muscles or brooding eyes. His only strength is his understanding of and expertise of the law,” says Bajpayee in a phone conversation with The New Indian Express from Hyderabad where he is promoting the Telugu dubbed version of the film.
Most significantly while there are references to Ambedkar and the Constitution in Bandaa, it also emphasizes the fact that Solanki is a hardcore believer while fighting the ills within his own religion. It’s as though his unwavering belief has also given him the license to question it. He can take on the Godman because he is the Man of God (‘Rab ka Banda’) himself. “He is on the right side, even if he goes left,” says Bajpayee.
There are many Average Janes and Joes like Solanki who have come to populate streaming platforms and cinema halls of late, be it battling housing crisis in Indore in Laxman Utekar’s Zara Hatke, Zara Bachke, fighting fake news in the boondocks of Rajasthan in Sudhir Mishra’s Afwah, or talking safe sex in Karnal in Tejas Deoskar’s Chhatriwali 
You can find them in Hansal Mehta’s Netflix series Scoop, about crime journalist Jagruti Pathak’s (Karishma Tanna) quest to prove her innocence on being accused of complicity in the murder of senior journo Jaideb Sen (Prosenjit Chatterjee). Then there is Reema Kagti and Ruchika Oberoi’s Dahaad on Prime Video, about a bunch of cops chasing a serial killer in a caste-ridden, patriarchal, and misogynistic Mandwa in Rajasthan and Yashowardhan Mishra’s Netflix series Kathal in which the case of two missing jackfruits turns into a farcical exploration of the ludicrous law enforcement and governance in North India.
These are not lay people caught in personal, familial, and social predicaments in the middle-of-the-road cinema of Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Basu Chatterjee or Sai Paranjape. The stories of the current underdogs are like alternative narratives within the mainstream commercial Hindi cinema format. At times on-the-nose, dramatic and drummed up, rough around the edges and prone to simplification and sentimentality, they are nonetheless showcasing the genuine impasse and contradictions peculiar to us and our times.
In a way, all the protagonists are ‘Satyanveshi’ (truth seekers), inhabiting what is ironically a post-truth world. Struggling against all odds, they are fighting to get rightful justice, in the process underscoring varied social ills plaguing us. Nandita Das' Zwigato looks at people who are the “new daily wage earners” as Das puts it, who unobtrusively kept our lives running during the lockdown and have still been at the receiving end of our class-based prejudices. Manas Mahto (Kapil Sharma) is forced to become a food delivery guy in Bhubaneswar after losing his job as a factory worker. “It was about zooming into people who have, to a large extent, become invisible in our lives, more so because of things like contactless deliveries during the pandemic,” said Das.
Violence against women was the primary issue in Dahaad, says filmmaker Reema Kagti. “Misogyny, patriarchy, casteism are serial killers too,” she says. Violence is heaped on ordinary, innocent, small-town women. What’s interesting is that the purveyor of brutality is himself a seemingly regular guy. “He is not an alien, he is a human born and bred in society,” says Kagti.
What excited the creator-writer of Scoop, Mrunmayee Lagoo Waikul, was that it was about a “regular girl” having the capacity to deliver on the job and do something with her life. “She, her world, her family, the challenges are all relatable,” she says. “The idea was to highlight the predicaments of the invisible people of the city,” says filmmaker Hansal Mehta. While showing the aspirations of a middle-class girl in the big city, Mehta zooms in on the issue of sexism in the workplace on the one hand and the ethics of media on the other. Above all, the prison diary of Jagruti Pathak spotlights the plight of scores of undertrials in India. “How ordinary people charged under draconian provisions like MCOCA (Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act 1999) have no recourse other than biding time in subhuman conditions,” says Mehta.
The hustle of the common people is something he identifies with deeply, a reason why it has been a concern in a lot of his films, be it a Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar or Citylights. “I have lived the hustle. I have been one in an ocean of humanity travelling in Mumbai trains, struggling to get noticed,” he says, adding that it’s a struggle that hasn’t been verbalized enough. More Solankis, Pathaks, Basors, Bhaatis and Mahtos on our screens could perhaps set the balance right.