Buddha in a Traffic jam is disgusting: An Indian pervert's guide to 'sexy woman'

Ever eaten something warm and gooey, lacking a definitive shape, which leaves a strange taste in the mouth? Something that at the end confuses you but leaves you with the certainty that it was decidedly unpleasant?

Vivek Agnihotri's enigmatically-titled Buddha in a Traffic Jam does so, in more than one way.

The film, which has already sparked a few debates about its political message and whether its blatant propaganda disguised as cinema, is about a smart and cocky management student Vikram Pandit, played by Arunoday Singh, and how he sets out to change the system with his own message of liberal socialism.

When his professor Ranjan Batki (Anupam Kher) at the Indian Institute of Business waxes eloquent about his theory of corruption being a necessary stimulant in Indian economy, the only one to oppose is Vikram. And thus begins their game.

Vikram, at Batki's insistence, moulds the professor's early socialistic ideas to suit today's youth - shown strangely as being hopelessly hooked to tobacco - only to find that he runs into hurdles of apathy as well as colourful insults.

The film, which seemed to be going in one direction till now, does a doubletake here and enters a realm where almost every character, who talks in the language of liberal intellectuals trying to save the poor, is imbued with the colour red. 

Maybe this is the filmmaker's way of co-opting the unapologetically apolitical youth of today, who identify only with issues that affect them like corruption, and slightly shifting their blinkers to the right. Propaganda, anyone?

Okay, for a second, leave aside the agenda setting. I mean, a film that has a panic-ridden Pallavi Joshi (playing Kher's wife Sheetal) screaming 'anyone could be a Naxal' to an equally terrified Vikram leaves one with little doubt about that particular message.

But an equally striking undercurrent in the film is Agnihotri's brand of feminism. Through Vikram's character, does he imagine himself to be a messiah of urban women struggling to overthrow patriarchy?

That's exactly what the key male characters in the film seem to be doing. He even appropriates the idea of the Pink Chaddi campaign, with Pandit shown as the originator of a Pink Bra Campaign after his friend is humiliated for "bar-dancing" by a bunch of right-wing moralists.

In fact, the montage that shows the campaign going viral shows men of all hues reading about it on the internet and showing it to their women friends, who presumably do not know how to browse the web.

The three main women in this sorry tale - Pallavi Joshi as Sheetal, Mahie Gill as activist-cum-Naxal Charu Siddhu, and Anchal Dwivedi as chain-smoking Pooja - all seem to be wishful phantasma of Agnihotri's righteousness.

Let's take it in order of appearance.

The filmmaker, through Pooja, brandies about a particular brand of feminism, which seems to be all about immaculately dressed "vampish" figures who smoke and drink all the time and are confident enough to break into songs about their own "bitchiness". In their bras, by the way. Talk about wishful male thinking!

Her ideas on where souls come from are openly ridiculed by Pandit, who in more than one scene is shown publicly embarrassed by her drunken shenanigans. Oh, and she is not a student of the management school where Vikram studies, because, well...dumb broad no?

What exactly was her role in the film, apart from showing Vikram as a champion of women's rights, is anyone's guess.

Then comes Sheetal, who describes herself as a bored housewife. That she was once working in the National Gallery of Modern Art is a line thrown almost as an aside. She relocated for her husband, you see.

She also runs a Potter's Club, an NGO that's apparently big enough to warrant government grants in crores. But the moment funds dry up, she looks up to her man, who she says gave her a purpose in life. Kher immediately promises that he will get her the money somehow. Self-sufficient anyone? Not in Agnihotri-land.

The said club of hers is central to the plotline. Her character, however, seems to again exist for the purpose of breaking it to Vikram in the end about the dangers of closet Naxalites everywhere. Only to casually undergo this.

Finally comes Charu. Here, the filmmaker seems to have taken some pains to paint her as his version of the activist-feminist types, with her kalamkari saree carelessly draped, but just so as to show her cleavage in almost every shot.

While Charu is shown as someone who's been working with the tribals of Chhattisgarh for a long time, it doesn't take too long before she gets sarcastically lectured about her own work by Vikram Panditji. (I'm not even going to get into the caste angle in this whole thing).

This particular character, who apparently has her heart in the right place, wordlessly submits when asked to stay in the jungle for a night by Gopal Singh (playing a fearsome Naxal chief), who then proceeds to do this.

All the three women in the film are smitten by the "intellectually superior" Vikram. After hearing just one of his speeches, Sheetal admits to wishing she was not married. Adulatory glances abound whenever women share screen space with Vikram.

Add to that a completely needless sex scene in a brothel scene, where Vikram pounds away, presumably to release his angst at the failure of the system. The woman in the red-tainted is not shown, except as a shape being moved by his thrusts.

The handsome genius also beds Charu, albeit more gently, for she was not a passing character in his film.

As a final flourish, sample this dialogue. "A sexy woman has no substance and women with substance are rarely sexy. By the time they are both, they are married." Ha-ha, went majority of the audience. Those who didn't laugh are probably those feminazis who can't take a joke.

Seriously Mr Agnihotri, thanks, but no thanks.