Noble but avoidable

It is a wonderful opportunity gone waste. This could well have been a take on To Kill a Mocking Bird or our own Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Instead it turns into a quasi docu drama dealing with child labour, trafficking and Bihar politics. No it is not even a Prakash Jha space dealing with the effect of crude politics in the area.

Neha Malini (Soha) arrives in India to start a school for the under privileged. However, to borrow from Harpen Lee, she is not one who has told herself: Before I can live with other folks, I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that does not abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience. As a result, she is one of the most non-descript character you can see in cinema, night walking through her role of the tech NRI with golden dreams for her country. She runs into three lads including Awdesh (Harsh Mayar). The kids are into big time crime in the village. The latest count is that they have killed five guys and are in ambush to do away with a few more – all this when the village elders are planning to cushion their pockets with public money in the name of bringing up the new village school with the cash that Neha brings. Neha also catches up with Awdesh’s mom (Seema Biswas – the one bright spot in the film). Mom in eternal turmoil tells the story of how and why her son took to crime and how the local tekedar (Zakir Hussain) is the cause.

The three boys are on the run. They are but tools in the hands of the more adult world that uses the naiveté of the kids to their immediate needs. The little ones are robbed of their innocence and of their childhood. Documentary details of how children are exploited and how there is trafficking of children and all this is possible only at the instance or command of the powers that be. One intelligent guess and Neha could well have smelt the rat. Not she, not for this script.

The film is tedious even for the just two hours it spans its story in. The performances are either non-existent or theatrical. It is surprising that Soha, a talented and good looking actress, has yet to get her due in our cinema and when she does she royally mucks it up. She looks ill at ease with the tale. The film fails in that famous statement in To Kill a Mocking Bird: a mob is always made up of people no matter what. This non-realisation makes the entire script mock at everything it touches on the way.

Charfutiya Chokre

Cast : Soha Ali Khan, Harsh Mayar and Seema Biswas

Direction : Manish Harishanker

Genre : Drama

Rating : *1/2 Seema Biswas Fake and synthetic