Why Udta Punjab is more than a footnote in history
So thank you Justice SC Dharmadhikari for upholding our right to watch Udta Punjab.
And thank you Abhishek Chaubey for making it.
In fact, Mumbai filmmakers should take heart. Anyone who now says that it is difficult to make cinema of truth in Bollywood should now point to Udta Punjab. Chaubey told me the other day that this film would not even be a footnote in the history of freedom of speech and creativity. Umm, something tells me it will be a little more than that.
Cinema as social document is difficult to pull off. But Chaubey uses his camera not just as a microscope but as a weapon of mass destruction. Corruption in Punjab police? Check. Politicians as drug lords? Check. Parents as bystanders? Check. Young people as witless victims? Check. Through four parallel lives, it shows the impact of drugs from across the border on not just a state but also its future.
Its most affecting element is the "Girl With No Name", Alia Bhatt, a champion hockey player in her district in Bihar, who comes to Punjab in search of a future. When her father dies, she has to farm, the hockey stick is replaced by a sickle. But when she comes to Punjab, the land of prosperity, as she knows it, it is replaced by a needle.
Her young woman could be a young woman anywhere in India, from Mumbai to Manipur. As she looks out of the window of the safehouse where she is being kept prisoner, she sees a billboard advertising the blue waters and clean beaches of Goa.
It's where she dreams of going - but as the song in the background goes, her distant dreams grin at her face. Like many young people, and not only in Punjab, she has nothing to tie her to her homeland.
If Punjab is her escape, Mexico is the dream for the young men plying the drug trade. The women apparently all look like Jennifer Lopez or so says one of the drug dealers. Udta Punjab is important because it shows just how class agnostic drug abuse is - from Mumbai to Phagwara, the story is the same.
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| Alia Bhatt in Udta Punjab. |
Tommy Singh, aka Tejinder Singh, a boy from Phagwara who went to Birmingham, is the Honey Singh clone, the iconic rapper whose songs about coke and c**k have helped turn an entire generation into "Udta Punjabis".
Shahid Kapoor plays him with a mix of manic energy and delinquent idiocy that manages to convey the hollowness of the drug culture with its punk hairstyles, blingy T-shirts, tattooed muscles and Ukrainian women. Diljit Dosanjh is the bent police officer, Sartaj, who is stirred into action, Kareena Kapoor Khan is Preet Sahani, the doctor-cum-anti-drug activist-cum-commander-of-war-on-drugs who turns from slogan shouter to investigator.
"Zameen banjar aur aulad kanjar," spits out one old man - it's a bitter truth that his generation has been a party to. Too much money, too few jobs, not enough parenting, and certainly not enough education.
As Tommy says at one point: "Maal khatam, party's over, go home." The rot is too deep.
Chaubey's canvas is Punjab in this film. It could as easily be Kashmir, Mumbai or Delhi. Young people and their problems are the same everywhere. As the movie draws to an end, Sartaj's young drug addict brother's cries echo in the hall.
It is a cry of anguish and for help. Chaubey has not exaggerated the problem, and if Pahlaj Nihalani was not a longtime resident of Narendra Modi's La La Land, he would know.
Udta Punjab is a reality, whether there are elections or not. And the greatest gift that Justice Dharmadhikari and Chaubey have given to Bollywood is the licence to finally tell it like it is. As Kareena's character says: "There are two wars in Punjab at the moment. The one on drugs and the other that young people are fighting with themselves. If they win, we win."
If that is not art, if that does not move you, and shake you to the core, then nothing else will.