Hanuman Dot Com

Starring: Prosenjit Chatterjee, Gaurav Pandey
Directed by Gaurav Pandey
Rating:

With Hanuman Dot Com, the director of Shukno Lanka has once again delved into the subconscious of the insignificant, ‘little’ man, to draw out a hidden grandness buried deep beneath layers of stereotyping. Named after the god Hanuman, Anjani­putra (Prosenjit) is the prototype of the middle-class, ambitionless Bengali schoolteacher who wears his well-oiled hair in a neat side-parting in summer and a mon­key cap in winter, dotes on his homey wife and is peer-pressured into joining colleagues in a fight (in vain) against the school’s forced computerisation. Enter the inte­rnet. Suddenly, an insidious romance and a horrific, secret cyber-crime throw his inner and outer worlds in turmoil. Pandey tries to weave a racy story—weaving love and lust, power and possession around the sensitive theme of human frailty. However, the execution falters, becoming alternately superb (like the ruthless ‘shock’ elements in the internet episode that plunges the plot onward) and sho­ddy (pointless dialogues such as the tea­cher’s ignorant queries about Iceland).

Indeed, there are glim­pses of an almost deliberate and even indulgent lack of structuring, as though the director wan­ted to present the natural flow of life without edit. Prosenjit looks and acts the part of the iffy teacher with ease. Pandey himself plays the role of the slimy Indian-living-in-Iceland-­married-to-foreigner with aplomb, clearly and infectiously enjoying himself.