Gaja Baja

Gaja Baja is a 2018 Nepali independent comedy film written and directed by Ganesh Dev Pandey, produced by Goma Bista and Dipendra Regmi under the banner of Tuka Entertainment. The film was released in theaters on 9 March 2018. The film stars Sushil Sitaula and Anupam Sharma in the lead roles, with Rabin Thapa, Uddhav Raj Bhattarai, Raksha Shrestha, Ambar Subedi and Barsha Siwakoti in the supporting cast. The film was in the news before its release because of the controversy over its title: the word 'gaja' is associated with marijuana in Nepali slang, and the film had to get a certification from the censor board, which delayed the release of the film for a while before it finally arrived in theaters.

Gaja Baja is the story of two best friends, Gorey, played by Sushil Sitaula, and Dadhe, played by Anupam Sharma, who are jobless young men living in Kathmandu. Their only passion and the main occupation of their life is smoking marijuana, and the film follows their long and absurd quest across the city to find marijuana. To fund their habit, they borrow money from a local gangster, Dhude, played by Rabin Thapa, but when they are unable to repay the debt, the gangster begins to pursue them all over the city. The situation becomes even more complicated when the gangster himself becomes the target of a group of mysterious men, and the two stoners are caught in the middle of this dangerous game, realising that finding marijuana in Kathmandu is not as easy as it seems.

The film is written and directed by Ganesh Dev Pandey, the director of the hit film Manjari, and the story is set against the reality of contemporary Nepali society: the film focuses on the issue of young people in the valley, their drug habits, and the unhealthy practice of seeking loans and indebtedness involved with gangsters. The director showed the social issues related to drugs in the film in an entertaining style, and the film received generally positive reviews from the Nepali critics who appreciated the freshness of the film's approach. However, some reviewers noted that the director's position on the legalization of the substance was not clear.

With a cast of popular and talented actors, the film offers a good amount of comedy and a serious underlying message about the state of the youth of Kathmandu, making it stand out as an independent film among the commercial films of its year.