Aashram(MX Player)
Starring Bobby Deol, Chandan Roy Sanyal, Aditi Pohankar
Directed by Prakash Jha
Rating: *(1 star)
A poorest of the poor series, Aashram stumped me with its abject crassness. Lengthy sequences of girls being chased across forests infested with two-legged animals, Babas and Babus seeking sexual favours from Babes who are all for it as long as the zeroes on the cheque are enticing enough, the storm of salaciousness in Aashram is the equivalent of a raid at a po*n factory where the law enforcers sit and watch the s*x act pretending to be doing it because …well…someone has to do the dirty job.
Prakash Jha who once made films about class discrimination and social inequality like Damul and Apaharan scales down his vision to suit the cheesy requirements of homegrown entertainment. There is sex. Normally used as a form of brutal oppression in Jha’s cinema, here for the first time in his work s*x is used as seductive tool. Sadly when we see the Caucasian woman Lucy(slitted gown and all) seducing the senior police officer we can only burst out laughing. The moans groans and the pixilated glimpse of a breast…is this supposed to be titillating? And if it is, then isn’t the series director guilty of the same sins as the shambolic baba?
The series has any number of strands jutting out of the plot like queasy hair from aging ears: the conscientious investigating cop(Darshan Kumaar), the innocent oppressed lower-caste girl(Aditi Phankar) who falls prey to Baba’s lust, the honest female doctor (Anupriya Goenka) who won’t be intimidated by muscle or money power, the Baba’s brutal right-hand man(Chandan Roy Sanyal) who won’t stop at anything to please his lord and master, and finally Nirala Baba, so smug in his debauchery he seems to be doing civilization a favour with his dirty doings.
As the Baba, Bobby Deol is hardly there. Whenever he does show up he wears the look of bemused attachment that says, ‘Aise bhi log hote hain kya?’
The answer to that is, yes as long as there are sleazy serials there will be a society more than willing to match up. Welcome to Nirala Baba’s despicable Aashram. Check-in at your own risk.