AND A BIT OF A GIGGLE : "WELCOME TO SAJJANPUR"

I want to firmly establish one thing from the start. I am not a fan of Bollywood. Not usually anyway. I have tried to watch a few of the classics in my time and have failed miserably on multiple occasions. Therefore I was not, shall we say, over the moon with joy when I heard that half of one of my modules for my degree would be devoted entirely to Indian cinema with a very large portion of Bollywood thrown in, naturally. This obscure little number was at the bottom of our list of “suggested films to view” and I picked it out purely for “intellectual” purposes; my aim was to analyze it and contrast it with another film – The Chess Players directed by Satyajit Ray, look out for the review of that one in weeks to come! – but anyway, the point is never in my wildest dreams did I expect to actually enjoy the film so much…
The story itself doesn’t sound that original; we are in a small village in rural India, pretty close to the present day if not the present day itself. Mahadev is a young man who has studied in university but has had to return to live in his village due to economic hardship. He dreams of becoming a writer but the closest he can get to making money for his writing is by charging a couple of rupees per letter for his largely illiterate neighbors in the village. But don’t think that Mahadev’s lot is monotonous. He gets embroiled in everything from love triangles to political scandals as he try to use his originality – literacy – to his best advantage, sometimes with unexpected results…
I think my main problem with Bollywood acting is that it takes itself a tad too seriously. Now, the same kind of acting is present here, but with the added bonus of a propensity to poke fun at itself from time to time. It has all the tropes of a good, old fashioned comedy. You know what I mean, what our (my) parent’s generation called “good, clean family fun”. But it does this without being all stiff and stuffy about itself. Mahadev is an upstart in more senses than one; he is bright but also tends to get carried away by his emotions to sometimes disastrous results. The film also makes a rather serious point about gender politics. Ok, there is a little bit of “queer cinema” thrown into this film somewhere. I won’t give out too many details because the whole thing kinda creeps up on you and this style suits the message a lot better I think. As far as topics like homosexuality and transgender and the like are concerned, the concepts tend to be seen as things to be ridiculed in developing countries – and cultures like that of India. This film however, devotes one of its sub-plots (don’t get me wrong the whole narrative in the film is heterosexual in a quite defined way) to make a stand on the matter, and the surprises in that quarter just keep coming until – literally – the last five minutes of the film. In short, this film was simply full of surprises for me. I really enjoyed it and laughed out loud at certain bits. It is possibly because I have grown up in Turkey and humor and culture in Turkey are very similar to their Indian counterparts. But I am fairly confident that Mahadev and his motely neighbors will be able to somehow entertain you no matter where you hail from…