The Hindu Business Line : Bumpy road for <I>Shobhayatra </I>

SHOBHAYATRA, Vijay Ghatge's Hindi film, has been cleared by the Central Board of Film Certification, but he hasn't been able to promote it since. The trailers, it seems, have failed to pass the Censor test. And this despite the fact that the first version features snippets from the film itself.

The Censor's objection is based on the perception that the trailer belittles national leaders, and Ghatge has decided to depend on sneak previews and brochures to get the word around. "The fact that the film is based on a Marathi play staged in five languages may get me the audience," he told Business Line.

Shobhayatra is set for release on February 25.

The film, according to Ghatge, is about the past set in contemporary times and has characters play-acting Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru. Subhash Chandra Bose, Lokmanya Tilak, Baba Genu and the Rani of Jhansi. They are all to appear in a procession organised by a bhai, the local don with political ambitions.

Even as they wait in a warehouse, all dressed and made-up, the masks fail to hide their real nature. One is a lawyer who works for the don; another is a businessman who has been identified for being bumped off by the don himself. Yet another is a professor involved in an examination racket and one more at that very moment is being raided by the CBI.

The movie is loaded with irony, and as its tagline states, is rich in "black humour" — like the tea-boy who cannot recognise Gandhi and a street boy who wonders what Independence Day and its 50th anniversary mean.

Explains Ghatge: "I have juxtaposed history and contemporary times; it's not a story of the historical characters but of the people who are wearing the mask for the moment and how they use history to hide their complexities."

The filmmaker is hoping "with fingers crossed" that there would be no further trouble because "the film has been staged in five languages with public approbation. Let's see."

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