In Eeb Allay Ooo! , the plum job of a monkey chaser at the government secretariat in Delhi’s Raisina Hill is up for grabs, but Anjani isn’t...
In Eeb Allay Ooo!, the plum job of a monkey chaser at the government secretariat in Delhi’s Raisina Hill is up for grabs, but Anjani isn’t quite making the cut.
Anjani (Shardul Bhardwaj) can’t complain that he hasn’t been properly briefed. Mahinder (Mahinder Nath) teaches the new migrant the abracadabra formula he uses to keep rampaging simians at bay. But try as he might, Anjani simply cannot utter “eeb allay ooo” with as much ease or confidence as Mahinder. The nonsense words get stuck in Anjani’s throat, drawing the scorn and wrath of his boss. Even the red-bottomed monkeys seem to be mocking their hapless relative on the evolutionary scale.
Prateek Vats’s feature debut, written by Shubham, is in the mould of Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake (2016). The 99-minute movie delivers a biting commentary on the absurdities of the capital’s state of employment and the despair of contractual labour. Eeb Allay Ooo! explores the meaningless rituals that allow Delhi to cloak itself in a semblance of normalcy and efficiency against a monkey menace. However, the imposing structures – Rashtrapati Bhavan, India Gate – do not impress or deter the wandering animals. Bureaucrats have sub-contracted the seemingly impossible task of animal control to a bunch of people who are forced...
