Mohan Sikka’s short story ‘The Railway Aunty’, on which the film is based, uses its atmosphere of defeat and rancidness much better. In the film, Bahl creates claustrophobia well, and then loses the story and the characters in it. We want to see underneath, and what we get, instead, is neon glaze.

B.A. Pass holds your interest as long as Bahl sticks to Sikka’s darkly twisted story. But each time he diverges — including his choice of the film’s cheesy name (Sikka’s story is titled The Railway Aunty) — the narrative wobbles.