WELCOME TO SAJJANPUR

A MOVIE WITH A SOCIAL CAUSE !!!!!!!!!!

WELCOME TO SAJJANPUR,is a truly,Shyam Banegal movie,simple,truthful,and realistic!

The movie revolves round a letter writer in a village of north India,and the complete story,is built around the letters,people ask him to write.The story is simple,but strikingly true and the depiction of the lives of villages,and the social evils have been presented,effortlessly but with an impact.Shyam Benegal has touched every sensitive issue,and the social evils existing in our society very well.Poverty,illiteracy,discrimination towards female child,superstitions,atrocities of so called upper classes of society,exploitation and sexual abuse of the lower class have been very beautifully addressed in the plot of the movie.Other existing evils,that have been stressed more,are superstitions,child marriage,ill treatment of widows,non tolerance to widow marriage,unacceptable non identity existence of hijras,fraudulent elections,political violence,migration of villagers to metros for earning money,due to lack of jobs and even facilities for agriculture,and finally the helplessness of the poor,to be driven to the extent of selling kidney,for money,to survive.

Shyas Talpade,has given a great performance as Mahadev,the letter writer,who is in love,with his childhood classmate,played by Amrita Rao,now married,to a poor farmer,played by Kunal Kapoor.who has migrated to Mumbai,since four years and survives on selling blood,and is ultimately driven to sell his kidney,to buy a kholi,to get his family to Mumbai.Mahadev helps him with money,procured by mortgaging his land,and prevents him from selling his kidney.Ila Arun has done great justice in the comic role of a superstitious village lady,who wants to marry her educated employed daughter to a black dog,born on Saturday,to ward off the impact of inauspicious stars,so that she can make the daughter leave her career and get married soon.Mahadev not only stops this ridiculous ritual but volunteers to marry her,and has a happy married life,and progresses well.to become a writer,where in he composes a novel,based on all these incidents.The victory of the village hijra,as the Pramukh of the Gram panchayat,is a very welcome indicator for the need to give the trans sexuals an identity,but her subsequent murder by the competing thakur family,and the double murder by the villagers of a cumpounder and his wife,who is a widow from the same village,are scaring.

The ethenic music is pleasant,screenplay is simple,but the dialogues touch the heart.Though the movie lacks the usual masala of locales,sex, and item numbers ,it never gets boring.All actors have done justice to their roles,and the direction ,as expected is superb.Shyam Benegal has succeeded in making a superb movie with a social cause,which is must see for all Indians,to fight the social evils,existing in our lives

Dr Sanjay Kapoor Lucknow