Explore Vishal Chaturvedi’s film Hanuman Ansh, examining the themes of liminality, spiritual transformation, and human identity
Deepa Mishra
Watching Vishal Chaturvedi’s Hanuman Ansh was, for me, less like watching a conventional biographical film and more like accompanying a young boy on a journey whose destination he himself does not know. The film tells the story of Lakshminarayan Sharma, who leaves home at the age of thirteen after the death of his mother, in search of God and in the hope of finding a connection with Rama through Hanuman. What stayed with me was not only the story of Neem Karoli Baba but also the idea of a human being gradually moving away from everything familiar in order to discover something within himself.
Although the story is set in pre-Independence India, I don’t think its relevance is historical. What interested me was the human condition represented through Lakshminarayan’s journey. He leaves one identity without immediately acquiring another. That state of uncertainty, searching, and transformation is something that remains deeply contemporary.
We may not wander through forests or travel without possessions today, but many of us experience our own forms of being “in between” – between identities, relationships, beliefs, and ways of living. In that sense, the film speaks to a question that is as relevant today as it was then: What happens when the life we are expected to live no longer seems sufficient?
While watching the film, I kept thinking about the idea of liminality, the state of being in between. Anthropologist Victor Turner uses this idea to describe a person who has left one identity but has not yet entered another. That is exactly how I experienced Lakshminarayan’s journey.
He leaves home, but he does not immediately become a saint. He wanders. He lives simply, meditates under trees, sleeps beside rivers, and meets different kinds of ascetics. He is no longer the child he was, but he has not yet become the Neem Karoli Baba whom the world will later recognise. He is somewhere in between.
I found this “in-between” space to be the heart of the film. What I particularly appreciated is that the film does not suggest that spiritual transformation happens in one dramatic moment. It happens slowly, through movement, encounters, solitude, and detachment. Lakshminarayan keeps moving from one place to another, but the real journey is taking place inside him.
There is an interesting moment at the Vaishnava temple in Rajkot. The Mahant recognises something unusual in the young boy and tests him. Lakshminarayan remains quiet and does not seem interested in comfort or praise. He eventually leaves. For me, this was an important moment because the film seems to say that spirituality cannot always be contained within institutions. Even a sacred institution can become a form of attachment if the seeker begins to identify himself with it.
The railway episode affected me differently. Lakshmandas travels without a ticket and is removed from the train by a British official. After he leaves, the train mysteriously refuses to move. When the officials come back to him, the power relationship is suddenly reversed. But what is interesting is that he does not ask for anything for himself. Instead, he asks that saints should not be removed from trains simply because they do not have tickets and that a railway station should be built for the local people. I found this episode particularly moving because the man who has renounced worldly possessions uses his unusual position not for personal gain but for the benefit of others. His detachment becomes a source of strength.
The film also surprised me by bringing him back into the world he had left. When his father finds him and asks him to return home, Lakshminarayan learns about his childhood marriage to Rambeti. He returns and accepts his responsibilities before eventually leaving again. This made me rethink the meaning of renunciation. The film does not present spirituality simply as running away from family or society. There is a period when the seeker must return and fulfil his responsibilities. Only then does he move forward again.
This is where the idea of liminality becomes particularly meaningful to me. Lakshminarayan is constantly crossing boundaries between childhood and adulthood, home and homelessness, family life and renunciation, society and solitude, the ordinary and the miraculous. He belongs completely to none of these spaces for very long.
And perhaps that is what makes his transformation believable within the spiritual world of the film. I also found myself thinking about the title, Hanuman Ansh. The word “ansh” suggests a part or a fragment. Lakshminarayan’s identity is never presented as completely separate from the larger spiritual world he seeks. His relationship with Rama and Hanuman gradually becomes central to his understanding of himself. His journey seems less about creating a powerful individual identity and more about surrendering the ego.
The final moments of the film left a particularly strong impression on me. After leaving Neebkarori, Lakshmandas moves towards Kainchi. There, a frightened man who has lost his way at night recites the Hanuman Chalisa, after which Maharaj Ji appears and guides him safely. The moment has a distinctly surreal quality. It seems to exist somewhere between the real and the spiritual, between what can be explained and what can only be experienced through faith.
I found this final moment especially significant because the journey has subtly changed direction. At the beginning, Lakshminarayan is the one who is lost and searching for guidance. By the end, we see him moving towards a space where he may himself become a source of guidance for others. The seeker is gradually becoming the guide. The film does not give us a complete transformation; instead, it leaves us at another threshold, with the promise of what is yet to come.
As a viewer, I did not feel that the film was asking me to prove or disprove the miracles it presents. Rather, it invited me to enter a world in which faith itself is a way of seeing. The miraculous events are therefore not merely plot devices; they belong to the spiritual imagination of the film. What I carried with me after watching Hanuman Ansh was a sense of stillness. Beneath the miracles and devotional elements, I saw a story about a human being who is willing to leave behind the certainty of the familiar and remain in uncertainty until another kind of understanding emerges.
It is ultimately not only the story of how Lakshminarayan became Neem Karoli Baba. It is a story about becoming, about leaving one’s known identity, entering an uncertain space, and emerging changed.
And as I watched him move through that uncertain space, I found myself asking a very personal question: Do all meaningful journeys in life require us, at some point, to become strangers to the person we once were? For me, that is the question Hanuman Ansh leaves behind.
(The author is a retired academic, literary scholar, and researcher. Views expressed are personal.)
