Udta Punjab (Hindi)
Cast: Shahid Kapoor, Aalia Bhatt, Kareena Kapoor, Diljit Dosanjh, Satish Kaushik
Director: Abhishek Chaubey
Growing up in Delhi one always felt something extremely reassuring, secure and comforting about the Sikh and Punjabi elders around, much more than the seniors of any other community. They seemed to ooze an infectious optimism and positivity. An affectionate word, a warm hug from them and even in your worst moments of crisis you’d feel that everything will eventually turn out alright. No wonder a scene in Udta Punjab broke my heart and betrayed these long-held beliefs in a mere instant. A patriarch gently addresses the Bihari migrant girl Pinky (Alia Bhatt) as “puttar” (child) and asks her why she stole heroin worth a crore if she had to eventually throw it away. The soft, soothing enquiry sets the most disturbing tenor for the viciousness and brutality that come to be heaped on her by his family of drug dealers, with his tacit nod of approval, of course. Udta Punjab is all about swallowing such bitter pills.
Chaubey exposes us to the frightening dystopia Punjab has become in the past few years. And it’s not something out of his own fictional hat but rooted in the state’s unfortunate present. A packet of heroin gets thrown like a discus from across the border and we are plunged into a pulsating, frenetic world of rock 'n' roll and drugs, of snorting chitta (white) powder, injecting a cocktail of liquids into the veins. Rock star Tommy (Shahid Kapoor, all sound and fury and sheer madness) aka Gabru takes you straight on the trip and gets you high. Not once does Chaubey glamorise the use of drugs nor does he turn exploitative with the grime, filth and muck. There could be much to nitpick on. The cop-doc romantic track as well as the tenuous bond between Tommy and Pinky do seem out of place – yet also provide a much needed breather in the film’s suffocating world. But ultimately for me Udta Punjab is not about the story, the four main characters, their acting or the music even. It’s about relentless exposure to a gut-wrenching reality for 148 minutes (a shorter version may have been even stronger) that I am still trying to process. It’s about the many innocent, helpless Ballis being born to drugs everyday.NAMRATA JOSHI
