Chhaava

One of Javed Akhtar’s favourite stories to tell is about fishing. Regardless of the venue — it could be an international seminar or one of those ‘naastik parishad’ meetings that he enjoys attending — he regales the audience with a carefully constructed bit about why fishing is considered a relaxing recreational activity while hunting is mostly outlawed across the world. The only reason for this, he declares in his punchline, is because fish don’t have vocal chords. They can’t shriek in agony when they’re pierced by a hook, scaled alive, and left to suffocate. Fishing has great PR, as do the folks behind the blockbuster film Chhaava, even though it incited a riot.

For nearly two hours, Chhaava runs like a mishmash of the testosterone-heavy Marvel and DC universe action spectacles. Here, it leads to one battle after another, as Maratha king Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj (played by Vicky Kaushal) duels against a lion (cue Russell Crowe in Gladiator), excels in aerial fights and takes on the Mughal army, often single-handedly. Accompanied by a bombastic background score by A.R. Rahman, the historical extravaganza comes alive in the last half hour, when the punches are not literal, but verbal. With the protagonist captured and chained, audiences finally get to see the daring hero and his enemy, a haggard Aurangzeb (Akshaye Khanna), in one frame. “Mughalon ki taraf aa jaaao. Zindagi badal jaayegi. Bas tumhein apna dharm badalna hoga (Join hands with the Mughals. Your life will change. All you have to do is convert to Islam),” says Khanna’s Aurangzeb in a final offer of freedom to the brutalised Chhaava. The Maratha king, his spirit untethered, retorts, “Humse haath mila lozindagi badal jaayegi aur dharm bhi badalna nahin padega (Join hands with Marathas. Your life will change and you won’t even have to change your faith).”

For the uninitiated, the glory of the Maratha kingdom ends with the great warrior Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. That his son, Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj, was an equally valiant, fearless and fierce ruler is a fact we are not fully privy to. Thus, on this count alone, ‘Chhaava’, which chronicles the life and death of Sambhaji, is worthy of celluloid attention. After a brief historical introduction in the voice of Ajay Devgn, the film comes straight to the point. Mughal emperor Aurangzeb and his courtiers are celebrating the death of Shivaji. The Maratha kingdom is now well within their grasp. Only they have not factored in the might of Shivaji’s son. Vicky Kaushal as Sambhaji soon appears with his army and his valour is on full display as he vanquishes his enemy in Burhanpur, a domain of Aurangzeb. Clearly, the emperor is enraged and vows to wear his crown only when he hears Sambhaji scream in pain. Can the Marathas defeat the might of the Mughal army? We all know the answer to this question. The point now is how well the director, Laxman Utekar, can take us through it. Until the intermission, the narrative moves at a fast pace. The period setting is right, with grandeur befitting the 17th century in which it is set. Sambhaji is not all brawn, but heart too. Other characters include a maternal uncle, Sarsenapati Hambirao (Ashutosh Rana), a loving and fawning wife Maharani Yesubai (Rashmika Mandanna), and a Rajput braveheart who is a poet too (Vineet Kumar Singh). But the problem is that whenever a Bollywood film is in service of one character, historical or otherwise, it goes overboard in eulogising its hero. Even if well deserved as in the case of Sambhaji, it keeps drumming the fact time and again. The net result is that not only are the other characters sidelined, the hero even when played by an actor of immense calibre like Vicky Kaushal does not get time to truly breathe. One of the early dialogues is, “Hum shikaar karte hain shor nahin”. Yet, the film is loud, with a louder background score (imagine, by none other than AR Rahman).

Based on Shivaji Sawant’s popular novel, Chhaava is a puff piece on Maratha warrior Chhatrapati Sambhaji, who took on the might of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb for around eight years in the 17th Century. Carrying forward the defiant approach of his father Chhatrapati Shivaji, he kept Aurangzeb occupied in the Deccan during the second half of his reign, inflicting heavy damage on his humongous army and pride with his unmatched valour and guerilla tactics before being betrayed by his brother-in-law. Historians may not have been generous to the shooting star but, over the years, Sambhaji has acquired an almost divine status in Marathi cultural space. In recent years, at least three Marathi films portrayed him as someone who laid down his life for the Hindu faith. Director Laxman Utekar carries forward the narrative. Early in the film, when Sambhaji maims a lion, it becomes clear that it is going be a literal cinematic depiction of Calendar art by Utekar, who started his career as a cinematographer. When Sambhaji saves a Muslim child amid a battle — and a few reels later, Mughal soldiers burn a shepherdess alive — it becomes clear the agenda Chhaava seeks to promote and the emotion it wants to play up. However, when characters start introducing themselves and their intentions like players at the start of a cricket match, one wants to tell Utekar, ‘Zara Hatke Zara Bachke’

Laxman Utekar’s directorial Chhaava focuses on building up on Sambhaji Maharaj’s tales of heroism with slow-motion action sequences and dialogues backed by heavy music. Still, Vicky Kaushal’s performance adds agency to the character and urgency to the plot. The film explores parts of the long story while also building on the world around it, introducing the historic era and Indian warriors of the time. Akshaye Khanna’s Aurangzeb is one of the key performances that keeps the film hooked but we needed a bit more from the roots of the story. Chhaava begins with a long narration of Sambhaji Maharaj’s family, and the tales of valour of his father Shivaji Maharaj and his grandfather Shahaji Maharaj. Narrated by Ajay Devgn, the same fills in the essence of the Maratha Swaraj as building blocks for the film. We do not get to see much of Sambhaji Maharaj’s childhood or his training for the throne instead, the makers added a few scenes showing how the memory of his late father always drove him in the right direction, meanwhile, his greed to know more about his mother and to make her proud kept him moving forward.

Chhaava opens with a Maratha raid on a Mughal town. As he slashes his way through enemy ranks, Sambhaji (Vicky Kaushal) notices a crying boy caught in the skirmish. He returns the child to safety. I knew this image would return in some way and it did, about an hour later. A little girl herding goats on Maratha land wanders out of the frame. In the next shot, she’s staggering back, set on fire by advancing Mughal troops. There’s no such thing as a moral army, only propaganda and the tales we choose to tell ourselves. A French traveler to India in the early 18th century wrote about the devastation of one Maratha raid: “We camped out next to villages reduced to ashes… Women clutching their children in their arms, men contorted, as they had been overtaken by death… a sight of horror such as I had never seen before.” We see such a scene in Chhaava—but done by the Mughals. When the Marathas in Laxman Utekar’s film (based on a 1980 novel) burn down a town, there isn’t a human in sight, and the only casualty is property.