Ashram 2 – The Unworthy Successor

Ashram 2, the sequel to recently released Ashram is now streaming. The first part was a well written, engaging series, which gave a glimpse of Baba Nirala and his Ashram, part 2 now extends with Baba’s increasing supporters and greed, and gets more into the wrongdoings in Ashram. 

Plot

Ashram 2 continues from where part one ended. Baba Nirala (Bobby) has started exploring the ways to make youth join his Ashram so he starts doing shows with Tinka Singh (Adhyayan). In addition the series shows a hugely increased supply of drug laden Laddus which is making the youth addicted.

Babita, who was raped by Baba in the first part has now given in and has started to get close to Baba replacing his close Sadhvi Mata. But Baba has not got eyes on Pammi (Aditi) and also drugs and rapes her a few times.

When Pammi figures it out she decides to take on Baba and get out of the Ashram. Ashram 2 also includes the reporter Akki (Rajiv Siddharth) in thick of things, where he enters Ashram as an electrician to uncover all the wrongdoings going on in Ashram.

Along with this the parallel plot focuses on the elections where both Chief Minister and his rival Hukum Singh constantly try to get Baba’s support, and Baba is keeping his cards close to him rubbing the CM wrong way.

In addition to this we have Inspector Ujagar Singh, who enter Ashram as drug addicts, to collect evidence and promising us of a better plot development, fizzle out soon and the track somehow seems forcefully cut short.

Ashram 2 focuses a bit on a few other ladies in the Ashram, but surprisingly this part does not focus much on Boppa bhai (who ideally was one of the important and best character in Part 1) and makes him a mere filler.

Now does Pammi manage to get out of Ashram, do Ujagar or Akki get evidences against Baba, and does Baba gets to grow his power much more is what this part deals with.

Hits

Sadly unlike the last part this part mostly disappoints. The performances of some of the actors is good which makes this watchable.

Misses

Lots of them. Ashram part 1 had started a lot of subplots, some of which were totally neglected in part 2, where some were just merely touched. 

The only portions that were focussed on were Baba’s obsession with Pammi/Babita and Politics of Hukum Singh and CM.  Even the tracks of strong performers (Bhopa Bhai, Ujagar Singh) were not given much spotlight in the series and seem to be abruptly sidelined. 

The writing which was very good and detailed in part 1 is a big letdown in Part 2. The character development of Bobby (which was expected after part 1), never happened and Baba is just made to look like only a womanizer and no other shades in his role were explored.

The pace of the Ashram 2 is too slow and everything gets repetitive and gets repeated as many times that after a while viewers will surely start feeling irritated. 

Performances

Ashram 2 has a few decent performances just like Part 1. Aditi as Pammi has been a standout performer and so has Chandan Roy Sanyal as Bhopa Bhai (even in very less screen time). 

Bobby Deol is efficient but the writing and an underdeveloped unidimensional written role restricted him to realise the full potential.

Tridha Choudhary as Babita, Darshan Kumar as Ujagar Singh and  Rajeev Siddharth as Akki are all ok in their limited screen time. Even the promise shown by Adhyayan’s Tinka Singh vanishes as he doesnt get anything substantial to do other than to sing 2 lines every episode – Baba Layenge Kranti (which never arrives)

Rest of the supporting cast is very average and does not add anything noticeable to this dragging season.

FFC Take

All in all, Ashram 2 is a big letdown after Ashram, which already had so many subplots open for the director to build on. Weak writing, poor character buildup and very average direction by Prakash Jha makes this part a very below average sequel.

The show still has season 3 to arrive, so this one can be watched just with hope that season 3 may try to pull all the strings together and ensure a proper execution of all the subplots. Till then – Japnam.