Welcome To Sajjanpur

The film never gets dull or downbeat. It never loses out on its rustic humour, courtesy some fine dialogue

Namrata Joshi

Updated on: 7 February 2024 6:00 pm

Published at: 27 September 2008 12:00 am

Welcome To Sajjanpur

Starring:

Directed by

Rating:

Shyam Benegal’s Welcome to Sajjanpur is a charming little film. Watching it at Kalpana Talkies in Saharanpur, with its creaking chairs and the patties-and-cream roll interval only added to the charm for me. Watching the film in such surroundings makes you appreciate better the fact that Benegal has captured the changing spirit of mofussil north India rather well.

Sajjanpur is a village trying to break into modernity. A woman here may have started riding a scooty but will be married off to a dog as a cure for her bad stars. It has enough mobiles and might soon get a spanking new mall. On the surface, Sajjanpur looks a bit too tidy and film set-ish; you wish the frames had some life-like dirt and grime. But its people, their relationships and concerns are real. Each of them is nicely quirky, winsome and whimsical. At the centre is Mahadev Kushvah (Shreyas Talpade), a failed novelist-turned-letter writer who writes everything from love letters to "Santoshi Ma" chain mail to even SMS for his clients. When the childhood love (Amrita Rao) walks into his life again, he begins manipulating to win her over. But can his essential goodness allow him to cross the limits of decency?

The ensemble cast, with many Benegal faves, is competent and in great form, especially Talpade and Yashpal Sharma as the wily former sarpanch Ramsingh. But the most endearing and poignant is Ravi Jhankaal as the kinnar (eunuch) Munnibai who wins the election in Sajjanpur and steals the audience. The most uneven track is that involving mausi Ila Arun trying to marry off Vindya (Divya Dutta). After a bright start, it’s left hanging for far too long, almost forgotten till it finds a logical conclusion towards the fag end.

Benegal packs in a truckload of issues—Singur, nuclear deal, caste, the nexus between crime and politics, widow remarriage, marginalisation of Muslims and their branding as ISI agents, illiteracy and superstition. There are many fine lessons to be learnt here. But the film never gets dull or downbeat. It never loses out on its rustic humour, courtesy some fine dialogue by Ashok Mishra. Here you laugh along with the characters. You smile with empathy and indulgence, never with derision.