Budhia Singh: Born to run is an epic tale of state failure

Budhia Singh: Born to Run stays true to the travails of a child prodigy and could be relevant even 10 years from now

Don't want to miss the best from Business Standard?

It is apt that the makers of Budhia Singh: Born to Run, chose this day — the Olympics opening ceremony — to release the movie. Budhia Singh’s unparalleled 65-km marathon from Puri to Bhubaneswar in 2006, at age four, could have been an unbelievable beginning to a career as a marathon runner, and yet, today Budhia is  disillusioned and has refused to go back to the government sports hostel in Odisha, where he has been living.

This movie is a paean to the epic Indian failures to provide children an environment in which to develop their talents. Schools should have been able to identify talent, states ensure children do not die of malnutrition, but for a child rescued from a slum in Bhubaneswar these facilities are clearly beyond reach. Into this vacuum steps his coach Biranchi Das, who ran a hostel for other underprivileged children as well.

The movie sticks true to some facts like the accidental nature in which Biranchi discovers Budhia’s talent. It is also disconcerting to watch a child being put under such strain at such a young age. However, Budhia excels and ends up participating in 48 marathons. Despite this he finds himself banned from participating in future events.

The movie delves into the complexity of those days. Did Das exploit Budhia or help him? Manoj Bajpai, who plays Das, is brilliant. Great acting must surely entail recreating a scene in as natural a way as possible. Many actors rely on the delivery of dialogues, but Bajpai does wonders with the measured nature of the pauses before the dialogues. Those few extra seconds change a scene from a script reading session to one of attempting to recreate reality.

Soumendra Padhi, the writer and director, has excelled in thinking about the implications of every action taken by the characters. The makers have come up with a historical document that could be relevant 10 years from now.

A still from the movie Budhia Singh: Born to run

There could be problems with the movie’s telling of the events. There are characters who could have been fleshed out better. For example, the chairman of the state child welfare committee is a typical villain and the stereotype bureaucrat; Sukanti, Budhia’s mother, could have received a little more play time; the child welfare minister is also similarly lacking in depth. However, as the movie is not a documentary, it helps push the director’s narrative better. As Slovenian psychoanalyst philosopher Slavoj Zizek says, “The truth has the structure of fiction”, which Budhia’s story definitely does. Padhi frees himself of the restraints of a completely factual story and delivers a gripping, fast-paced movie. In fact, the parts of the story that actually appear fictional are the snippets of archival footage that have been interspersed in the movie.

For instance, he is able to highlight the completely Kafkaesque functioning of the bureaucracy that has failed to lift the ban on Budhia, who is 14 now, and the tests it ordered on him to check if he was consuming drugs. It also shows us the dangers of relying on the good intentions of people — like in the scene where the head of the trust run in Budhia’s name reveals that none of the private pledges of money amounted to anything. After all, we can still put a face to the authorities who fail in their duties of helping nurture a child’s talent.  

Clearly, unless there is a schooling system that provides uniform access to education to all children, such instances of utter wastage of talent will regularly come up, and give our storytellers great fodder.