Andhra Pradesh

Warm, witty peek into ‘Bharat’

A publicity still from Welcome Sajjanpur.

Film: Welcome to Sajjanpur

Cast: Shreyas Talpade, Amrita Rao

Direction: Shyam Benegal

As India has moved away from Nehruvian socialism to Manmohan’s capitalism, veteran director Shyam Benegal brings Bharat back to the attention of India. Focussing, subtly as ever, on those left behind in the race for development, he spins together a warm, witty tale of unconditional love. The laughs, the songs are all there. Yet there is a catch: “Welcome to Sajjanpur” is not yet another story of a boy-meets-girl, falls-in-love. Rather, it is a nice peek into a Bharat we all thought had ceased to exist, a nation where illiteracy is still a reality, and the need for a letter writer and reader quite ubiquitous. Maybe a bit hard to digest for the cola-sipping, low-rise jeans-clad generation, but it in no way detracts from the merit of Benegal’s story.

“Welcome to Sajjanpur” is a film that grows on you, gradually, imperceptibly, surely. And Benegal takes pot shots at a system where the fruits of development don’t percolate down to all. There are unlined roads, load shedding is a companion for the better part of the day, cars are a rarity, the railway station is nondescript and the ramshackle public transport bus as noisy as you come across when you leave the metropolis. There is Panchayat Raj in villages for sure. Here too, however, the foot soldiers have turned the noble idea on its head. The women panchayats are merely shadow candidates for men with a criminal record. Women contest the elections, but the men use the remote control. A neat subversion of democracy.

Benegal’s approach is never didactic. No sermons, no harangues on the system that has failed to provide equitable fruits of progress. Just a little aside, which you would notice if you have an open eye and an alert mind. Benegal backs it up with a heart warming tale of good old fashioned love. Shreyas Talpade plays a letter writer who wanted to be a novelist. And among the people he pens letters for is Amrita Rao as Kamla, a long waiting, young bride, left behind in the village as her husband goes to the city for earning a livelihood. The fact that she dropped out of school even as Talpade’s Mahadev completed his schooling and his graduation is a nice comment on a society where a girl often has to pay the price for the crime of being teased in her class!

Mahadev wants Kamla. Badly. But she is waiting for her hubby, who won’t show up even after four years of marriage. There is a nice game of mischief and love as the story reaches its destination. But long before that Benegal scores a few points: it is possible to speak to the multiplex-frequenting crowd speaking the lingo of rural India. It is possible to make socially relevant cinema.

It is more than likely to churn out a story from the Hindi film industry without even going remotely close to the U.S, the U.K. and all those haunts of Indians who long ceased live in the heart of India Embrace “Welcome to Sajjanpur” with an open mind. And a heart that still beats for India and all Indians.

ZIYA US SALAM

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