At the International Film Festival of Shimla, I came across Bodh, a Bhojpuri-language film directed by Prashant Ranjan. I knew little about it before the screening. By the end, I found myself thinking less about it as a Bhojpuri film and more about the people I had just spent time with.
Bodh is set during the Covid-19 lockdown, but it is not really a film about the pandemic. It is about isolation, family, responsibility and the way relationships change when the routines of everyday life suddenly disappear.
Professor Kailash Narayan, played by Niraj Krishna, is a physics professor stranded alone in his Patna home after the nationwide lockdown begins. His wife Gayatri and son Vinayak are in another city. His daughter Sharda is in a hostel in Bengaluru, where she is studying medicine.
Two of Kailash’s tenants, both students and both named Rohit, are also stuck in the house. They live on the first floor while the professor occupies the ground floor.
At first, Kailash maintains the distance of a strict landlord and teacher. The two young men are his tenants, and he treats them accordingly.
Then the lockdown stretches on.
The relationship changes gradually.
The Rohits begin bringing groceries and medicines for him. Kailash starts worrying about them. The landlord-tenant arrangement develops into something closer to a family relationship, with the professor taking on the role of a concerned father figure.
Prashant allows this change to emerge through ordinary interactions rather than dramatic declarations.
The same restraint appears in Kailash’s relationship with his wife, Gayatri.
She is in another city, unable to be beside her husband during an uncertain period. Their telephone conversations become an important emotional thread. She checks on him, worries about his loneliness and eventually calls the two Rohits herself, asking them to take care of him.
The exchanges have the familiarity of a long marriage. Gayatri cannot physically look after Kailash, so she finds another way.
Sharda provides another window into her father’s loneliness.
She remembers his old interest in painting and encourages him to return to the hobby. It is a small detail, but it reveals the person behind the professor. Kailash has spent years being a teacher, husband and father, while painting has gradually disappeared from his life.
Sharda tries to bring it back.
Kailash also misses her deeply. At one point, he asks her to find a way to come home. It is an uncomplicated moment between a father and daughter, but it captures the emotional cost of being separated during the lockdown.
The two Rohits provide a different rhythm.
Played by Shubham Dubey and Kunal Ranjan, they are tenants, students and roommates trapped together. Their scenes bring much of the film’s humour.
They cook together, sleep, go out for groceries, jog inside their room and find ways to keep themselves occupied. Their clothes, habits and small disagreements add to their shared world.
Their comic timing works because the humour grows out of their situation. They are not simply there to provide jokes. They are two young men trying to maintain some sense of normal life while stuck away from their families.
Anyone who has lived away from home as a student in a rented apartment will recognise parts of their daily routine.
Their relationship with Professor Kailash evolves at the same time. The three men begin as landlord and tenants. Gradually, they become people looking after one another.
The house becomes the centre of the film. Kailash lives downstairs, the Rohits upstairs, and the lockdown slowly brings their separate lives together.
Then the story moves into Kailash’s extended family in the village.
He speaks regularly with relatives back home. Their conversations reveal another side of the lockdown. People returning from cities are required to spend time in quarantine centres. Villagers are anxious about those arriving from large urban centres because they fear they might carry the virus.
A homecoming, normally a celebration, has become a source of suspicion.
The film captures this shift through conversations rather than exposition. The pandemic has changed how people understand distance, family and community.
Prithvi Raj’s cinematography and editing support this intimate scale. Much of the film takes place inside homes and through conversations, so the camera stays close to the characters and their surroundings. The domestic spaces are not merely backdrops. They become part of the story.
Niraj Krishna gives the film its centre as Professor Kailash. His early strictness establishes the character, making his later warmth towards the students more convincing. His expressions and dialogue delivery remain controlled as the professor gradually becomes more vulnerable.
Shubham Dubey and Kunal Ranjan have strong chemistry as Rohit 1 and Rohit 2. Their comic exchanges bring warmth without disturbing the film’s tone.
Rachna Singh, as Sharda, adds an important emotional layer to the family. Her conversations with her father reveal a relationship shaped by affection, distance and concern.
The supporting cast includes Dr. Subhash Krishna as the doctor, Abhishek Tiwary as Munna, Kailash’s nephew, Anil Mishra as Professor Sahdev Kumar, Kailash’s colleague, and Adarsh Kumar as Tej Kumar, the reporter.
Bodh also arrives against a complicated history of Bhojpuri cinema.
Bhojpuri has a cultural and spiritual tradition extending well beyond contemporary popular entertainment. Saints and poets including Kabir, Dharni Das, Kina Ram and Dariya Saheb used Bhojpuri and related linguistic traditions for spiritual and philosophical expression.
Bhojpuri cinema emerged in the 1960s. Its origins are associated with India’s first President, Rajendra Prasad, who came from Bihar and encouraged actor Nazir Hussain to make a film in Bhojpuri. Ganga Maiyya Tohe Piyari Chadhaibo followed in 1963.
The industry experienced periods of growth and decline. Major Hindi-film actors including Amitabh Bachchan and Mithun Chakraborty also appeared in Bhojpuri films.
The revival of Bhojpuri cinema in the early 2000s brought renewed commercial attention, but parts of the industry also faced criticism for double-entendre dialogue, sexually suggestive lyrics and provocative dance sequences. The portrayal of women became another part of the public debate.
Bodh takes a different route.
It remains firmly Bhojpuri in language, setting and social context, while its subject extends beyond the region. A father missing his daughter, a wife worrying about her husband, two students trying to manage life away from home and a professor rediscovering an abandoned part of himself are experiences that do not require translation.
The title, Bodh, means enlightenment or realisation. The film treats it as a gradual process rather than a single revelation.
Kailash does not suddenly discover a new philosophy. He begins to notice the people around him differently.
The students he once saw primarily as tenants become companions.
His daughter’s suggestion to paint reconnects him with a part of his earlier life.
His wife’s concern reminds him of the intimacy that distance cannot erase.
His village conversations show him a society changing under pressure.
That is enough for the title to make sense.
Bodh is a patient film. Its conversational pace will not suit every viewer, but its approach gives the characters room to develop.
What I found most satisfying was its attention to ordinary moments. Two students preparing food. A wife calling her husband. A daughter asking her father to paint. A professor asking his daughter to come home. Tenants bringing medicine to their landlord. Relatives discussing quarantine in a village.
The film does not need to turn these moments into grand statements.
They are the story.
And when the film ends, what remains is not a particular lockdown statistic or a dramatic event. It is Professor Kailash, sitting inside a life he thought he understood, slowly seeing it differently.
For a film called Bodh, that feels like the right place to leave him.