Review: 'Baboo Band Baajaa' (Marathi)

Film: Baboo Band Baajaa (Marathi)
Director: Rajesh Pinjani
Cast: Milind Shinde, Mitalee Jagtap Varadkar, Vivek Chabukswar
Rating: ***

There’s a death in the village. Bawling women, quietly mourning men welcome the audience into Baboo Band Baajaa’s deprived world.

Debutante director Rajesh Pinjani, a native of Kamthe (Nagpur, Maharashtra) presents a heartfelt story of a family caught between circumstantial conflicts.

Set in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra (you know only because of the dialect), Baboo Band Baajaa traces a few days in the lives of Shirmi (Mitali Jagtap Varadkar), her husband Jaggu (Milind Shinde) and their 10-year-old son Baboo (Vivek Chabukswar). The impoverished parents slog to make ends meet. Shirmi is a bhandiwali, selling utensils in exchange for old clothes, while Jaggu plays musical instruments at local functions that include funerals.

The struggle to rise above the cruel jokes that life plays using darts like poverty and illiteracy defines director Pinjani’s vision for Baboo Band Baajaa. Shirmi wants to educate Baboo so he can have a better life when he grows up. She wants him to become a teacher, a dream her own father wanted to live for her. But Jaggu is hard-pressed, with his once glorious “band party” instruments mortgaged and no business thanks to events like mass marriages. He wants Baboo to play with him in the band.

Baboo has his own problems. He doesn’t wear a school uniform, simply because he doesn’t have one. The cruel school master sends him home every single day. To top it all, Baboo loses his school bag. What follows is a whole new struggle for his mother, to buy him new books and a bag.

Waiting for a death in the village only to earn a hundred rupees, jumping into a fire to save a school bag, are grim reminders of the penury that plagues Indian villages. There are more than just farmer suicides here. Pinjani captures the raw anxieties that are willing guests on the brow of destitution.

What’s lost on the production value front, is made up for by the well cast actors. Milind Shinde is complex, torn by difficult decision-making and always believable. Mitali Jagtap Varadkar rightly deserves recognition as National Award winning Best Actress (2011) for her Shirmi act. She’s expressive, yet strangely inconspicuous in many ways. The scene where she’s unable to hide her excitement at finding a school uniform pant as a pawn item for her utensils is particularly memorable. The hero of the film is little Vivek Chabukswar, who defies age to prove the subtlety and sincerity involved in acting. Much of the film unfolds through his eyes that are unwavering, timid and mischievous, all at the same time. His confidence is impeccable.

Baboo Band Baajaa is not a pretty looking film, just like its subject. Out of focus shots, unrefined sound sync and unimpressive editing work against the heartwarming tale. The story is, however, beautifully told, using minimalist dialogue and in a matter-of-factly tone. Pinjani uses own experiences of having grown up in a place where being a bandwallah is the sole source of income for underprivileged men and for the women it is working in ginning factories or homes. In a chat, he said he wanted children to watch the film with their parents just so they pick up the right message. The lengths parents go to keep their wards happy is just one of them.

Even though it’s long drawn-out and technically not the best, Baboo Band Baajaa remains a must watch for its performances and crudely overwhelming story.