In Bollywood there is no shortage of comedies. From the hilarious romantic comedies of Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Basu Chatterjee to the slapstick comedies of Priyadarshan's southern remakes, our national-language cinema has been giving its audience many glorious moments for laughing. But it is a fact that only a handful of them have given us some food for our brain. It's rare for a film to use the clichéd characters and settings of Bollywood cinema wisely for satirical purposes. And it also needs simplicity and much dexterity. No one might think that a film by Shyam Benegal, who is associated with socially relevant movies, would venture into the comedy genre. But followers of the Shyam Benegal school of moviemaking will recall Charandas Chor (1975) and Mandi (1983), which he describes as a "black comedy." In effect, his new film, Welcome to Sajjanpur, is Benegal's return to the comedy genre. And it has some political overtones.

This Benegal film amalgamates hard realities (honour killings, political manipulations, branding or marginalizing the minorities, land acquisition for industrialization or Special Economic Zones, etc.) with a feel-good setup. Mahadev (Shreyas Talpade) is a wannabe novelist, among the more literate, educated residents of Sajjanpur, a village in North India. Not inclined towards jobs like running his family vegetable shop, Mahadev opts for a more interesting career choice: writing letters for the village-folk, most of whom are illiterate or who are unable to express their feelings in writing. Through this he comes across many life stories, ranging from the touching to the banal to the ridiculous. The political theme of the film is introduced when a typical "Sarpanch," or village head (Yashpal Sharma), who is supporting his wife to win the local election, threatens Mahadev into writing a letter that falsely implicates the opposition candidate with Pakistan's ISI.

A song sequence in the film contains clearly political visual elements, for the first time in a Benegal film. The Sarpanch's wife's party amalgamates the symbols of India's two national parties: a saffron-coloured flag and the palm of a waving hand. And the opposition party is linked visually to a billboard bedecked with a hammer and sickle, the inscription of India's Communist Party beneath it. Earlier in the film, there is also a sarcastic depiction of the villagers' concern about the lack of electricity and how the government is parading the hope that everything will be all right when nuclear energy comes. There is little doubt about Benegal's political inclinations. The film shows perfectly how the changes and attitudes of urban India reach to the nation's rural areas.

Shyam Benegal successfully manages to do justice to both aspects of the film: political satire and romantic comedy. The veteran filmmaker shows great dexterity in both the emotional and comic scenes, extracting great performances from the entire cast.

Dileep M.M
© FIPRESCI 2008