Just days before I saw the very real and gripping Qaidi Band, a vegetable seller in my locality whom I saw regularly on the street disappeared. When I asked his wife about him, she said he had been taken to jail after getting in a street brawl where he tried to save a friend from a knife attack. Now, sobbed the wife, they can’t afford a lawyer who can bail him out.
Blessedly, in Qaidi Band there is a hotshot lawyer played by Ram Kapoor, who agrees to help innocent undertrials free of cost. Such miracles don’t happen in real life. But when they do in this film, we sigh in relief. In Habib Faisal’s fast-flowing anthem to imprisoned angst, Sanju (played with bridled vigour by debutant Aadar Jain) tells Bindu (Anya Singh, a prized find) about how he got trapped into prison life. This happens in a judiciously crafted scene where Sanju attends to Bindu’s wounded foot while narrating his tale in a rapid-fire loop. Yes, Sanju talks a lot. He has a lot of pain to hide, and he hides it well.
His healing touch is indeed balm to Bindu’s ‘sole’.
In Qaidi Band, I found many such moments of deep connectivity creeping up on me from the corners of the austerely articulated frames that send out silent screams against the cult of injustice which we have embraced much in the same way that thousands accept rapists as godmen.
Qaidi Band hits out at the Establishment. It hits out real hard. From the start, writer-director Habib Faisal means business. He wastes no time in preliminaries as the UTs (undertrials) are introduced to us without fuss or flourish. It’s astonishing how much the two principal debutants blend into the ferociously raw fabric of the storytelling. Both Aadar Jain and Anya Singh are exemplary in their ability to comprehend the sheer desperation of their characters’ predicament.
The narrative is huddled and strong. It raises pertinent questions on the issue of freedom and then lapses into a kind of loopy climactic triumph that is purely Utopian. The young fresh-faced actors convey the anguish of the endless wait for freedom with conviction. Aadar Jain is the clown of the pack, conveying a strong sense of righteousness even when wronged. Aadar reminded me of his grandfather Raj Kapoor. His eyes speak volumes. And Amit Trivedi’s music does the rest.
Anya’s Bindu remains optimistic till the moment the Judge announces her bail at Rs 5 lakhs. Her meltdown in the courtroom when the honourable (and frankly weary) Judge suggests Vipassana will convince even the most diehard cynic that Anya is a talent to reckon with.
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The other newcomers playing desperate prisoners are also exemplary, especially Mikhail Yawalkar as the poet and family man who waits every month for his wife and daughter’s visit and is crushed like the birthday cake that the wife brings for him, when his daughter refuses to visit.
High praise must also be showered on cinematographer Anay Goswami for bringing to the rust-coloured frames a feeling of arid anxiety. And Amit Trivedi’s music, aided by anguished angry barbed lyrics, go a long way into giving this remarkable film a slug at sustained excellence.
Yes, the climax is unrealistic, and Sachin Pilgaonkar as the morally compromised jailor is too much Santa, too little Gabbar. But the flaws don’t take away from this film’s long-legged statement on freedom and how much we take it for granted.
Habib Faisal’s film avoids the preachy route. It’s neither a vehicle to launch new talent nor a propaganda piece like Toilet: Ek Prem Katha. Its efficacy is lodged in its sincerity of purpose and an absolute disregard for formulistic tropes and clichés. After seeing Yash Raj’s Befikre and Meri Pyari Bindu, I had begun to lose faith in the illustrious banner. Qaidi Band is the finest Yash Raj film after the demise of Yash Chopra, along with Dum Lagake Haisha. Habib Faisal’s Qaidi Band was a disaster. But an honourable failure. It gave us two promising newcomers, Aadar Jain and Anya Singh, whose careers didn’t get anywhere.
Easily and hands-down the best male discovery of 2016, Aadar, who belongs to the illustrious Raj Kapoor ‘khandaan’, played the wrongly convicted jailbird with tremendous empathy, warmth, and feeling. A pity this film sank without a trace. Aadar deserves a second chance.
In a throwback interview with this writer just before release, Aadar said, “I have a three-film deal with Yash Raj. I bagged it on my own. Only my parents, my elder brother Armaan, and my Naani (maternal grandmother Krishna Raj Kapoor) knew that I was auditioning for the role. When I was zeroed in, I broke the news to the rest of the family.” The youngster was shocked when, on the morning after the launch event where he and his co-star Anya Singh were introduced, reports of nepotism broke out all over the internet.
The affable Aadar explained to me, “First of all, I didn’t know what ‘nepotism’ meant. I had to look it up. But how was I a product of nepotism? I was not being launched by my family. I was being launched by Yash Raj Films and Aditya Chopra. I am not related to them. I guess I’ve learned early in my career that I will be mercilessly trolled for no fault of mine. I might as well be prepared for it from now.”
Nepotism wasn’t the only controversy that Aadar found himself in. It was being said that Qaidi Band bore an uncanny resemblance to another on-release film Lucknow Central. Not one to mince words, Aadar explained, “I had no clue about any other film being made. I have been consumed by my own film that I couldn’t think of anything else. But eventually, I saw the trailer of Lucknow Central and noticed that the film too is about a musical band in jail and a jailbreak. I don’t know how or where the similarity came from. But I will say this — no two films can be the same even if they are based on the same plot. It’s like my favourite dish Junglee Mutton. All of us Kapoors love it. But everyone makes it differently, although the ingredients used are the same.”
Eventually, both Qaidi Band and Lucknow Central flopped.
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