Of ‘Udta Punjab, the film..

The year was 2000, I was in a seminar at the India Habitat Centre, the discussions were about the problems that the Punjab was in need of confronting, the room was full of eminent Sardars and Punjabis’, the session’s Chair was M.S Gill, who was CEC, and Dr Manmohan Singh, not yet Prime Minister, had just walked in to sit unobtrusively in a chair at the back. I heard speaker after speaker get up to berate the Punjabi fondness for excess, for several of its failings, excessive irrigation with the Bhakra Channal waters had led to salinity of the lands, excessive fondness for material things had induced a culture that lived in the ‘glitter’, pride was excessive, which induced a vanity that was excessive, appetites were excessive, for food for drink for mind altering drugs. The ability to stand up and squarely call a spade a spade amongst the Punjabis was what impressed me that day, which is why I was a little taken aback when I heard protests from the ranks about the manner in which the film Udta Punjab depicts the drug abuse that ails the youth in the State today, it is a problem that is real and present, and no amount of hiding will wish it away.

The controversy over the idiom of the film, its language, the excessive use of expletives, and its show casing of the drug abuse amongst the youth of the Punjab, was like a preview, a foreword for the film itself, which in comparison with the drama of the debate, feels like an academic documentary, there’s a great deal of research, all that is fed to the audience, the detail denudes the narrative of lyricism, fills up the spaces where imagination would have had a play if left vacant. Several stories overlap and interplay and the film is well made nevertheless, it has its moments. The best moment for me was when Sartaj (Dosanjh) voices his fondness for Preet ( Kareena) in an endearing drug induced fuzzy state. Beautifully done. Kareena’s character could have been played by anyone, she plays a de-glammed doctor, who teams up with Dosanjh to clean up the drug racket, looks a little washed out and wasted.  Dosanjh is the revelation of the film, he shows us a Jat-Sikh, simple, a man with limited intellectual abilities, not idiotic nevertheless with a heart that sees and feels, great acting that. Shahid plays a Pop Star, named Tommy, after the Punjabi wont for such Anglicized names! high on drugs, who eventually realizes the folly of his ways and sets out to make amends by saving  Aliya Bhatt’s  Character  from the clutches of the drug mafia. They are both very good, she as the bihari migrant worker, who has tremendous spunk, he as the spaced out caricatured pop star, they hold the film together and keep the audience in their seats. Shahid plays the pop star like he was a cartoon, somewhat unreal, but then I suppose pop stars are such characters.
The film is a detailing of how drugs are accessed, supplied, and the affect they have on lives, destroying them quite literally in fatal ways. Nothing new there, except that the geographical location is the Punjab. Punjab is a border state, the young are easy to influence, icons play a part in this, all that is old hat too, which is why the film feels like a documentary. Would have much preferred a personalised drama with a similar message, would have made the point more intensely, but that is my preference.

The pop star who sings of drugs and their potent effect on the mind, sings Shiv Kumar Batalvi’s “Ek kudi jida naam mohabbat” when asked to sing in exchange for information about the girl he wishes to save. that authentically Punjabi nazm, makes a connect as it always does, with the character for whom it is sung and with the audience at large, it is beautiful , the immortal Batalvi live on in his work. The film looks real enough, the Punjab and its essential motifs are all there, the sights, the sounds, the characters, the music, the geography.

It’s a little long, two and a half hours a bit much, well made and worth a watch nevertheless.

Vinny Jain