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Review: Welcome to Sajjanpur
Movie
Welcome to Sajjanpur
Director
Shyam Benegal
Cast
Shreyas Talpade, Amrita Rao, Ravi Kishan, Ila Arun, Divya Dutta, Yashpal Sharma, Rajeshwari Sachdev, Ravi Jhankal
Sonia Chopra
Very much like its title, the film is simple and sweet.
Jawaharlal Nehru gave the name of this village, gossips Sajjanpur’s sole letter-writer Mahadev (Shreyas Talpade). He’s an interesting sort of chap—wanted to be an author, but luck chose him this profession. So particular is he about his writing, he refuses to use a ball pen and calls the ink pen his “jeevan sangini”.
A revolutionary at heart, writing street plays on the sly, Mahadev is too fearful to jump the fence just yet. So he pretends to be agreeable to the local political goonda Ramsingh (Yashpal Sharma) who also depends on him for writing acerbic letters to the Collector.
Invariably getting involved in his client’s problems despite his policy of not interfering, we meet the village through Mahadev’s open-aired shop under a tree. There’s Kamla, his childhood sweetheart, now married (Amrita Rao); a eunuch who wants to challenge Ramsingh; a young man who’s fallen for a widow, and a woman (Ila Arun, fabulously comical) who wants her daughter married to a canine to get rid of mangal dosh.
Images: Getting up close and personal with Amrita Rao
In effect, he becomes the keeper of everybody’s secrets, and uses everything from diplomacy to lying to keep himself out of trouble. His nobility is suspect when he develops feelings for Kamla and uses his pen to manipulate the situation.
While the entire film aims at making you laugh, very few scenes succeed. There’s one that explains how Mahadev gets out of the rut of writing letters mechanically by adding true emotion in them. And then another one where he writes out a mobile chitti—an SMS.
The cast is superb. Shreyas Talpade carries the film valiantly and gives a crackling performance. Amrita Rao is fabulous. The supporting cast does very well: Yashpal Sharma, Ravi Kissen, Divya Dutta and Rajeshwari Sachdev. However at times, in an attempt to make you laugh, most actors go several shades over, ruining the premise for effortless humour.
Songs by Shantanu Moitra (lyrics by Ashok Mishra and Swanand Kirkire) are hummable. Camerawork is competent. Writing could have done away with the superfluous gags (there’s a tiresome one about a man and his lost father). Editing needed to take care of the trimming of sub-plots. Dialogue is interesting—the UP dialect may be a trifle challenging to follow at first.
Through the lives of the Sajjanpur people, director Shyam Benegal makes a statement about contemporary rural India. Where there is electricity but “22 hours of load-shedding”. Where children are sent to school but yanked out on the smallest of excuses. Where superstition and modernism are fighting for their place, and the people don’t know which to choose. Benegal dryly touches upon topics like the status of widows, abuse of power in local politics, farmer-unfriendly schemes and outrageous blind beliefs. But none are fleshed out satisfactorily.
You’d be better off expecting a Nukkad-type peek into the life of Sajjanpur-ites, rather than savouring Benegal manifesting his politics in the film.
Welcome to Sajjanpur is fun overall, but not funny. It’s a khatta meetha story that is on-and-off entertaining and absorbing.
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