Welcome to Sajjanpur
I happened to watch 'Welcome to Sajjanpur', a movie by Shyam Benegal on DVD recently. One of the better movies I've watched of late. A squeaky clean comedy movie set in a village by name Sajjanpur (renamed from Durjanpur on orders from Jawaharlal Nehru !)in contemproray times.
In a village where most of the population is illiterate, the protagonist is a man - Mahadev - who has set up a shop outside the post office and makes a living by writing/reading letters for others. The story is mostly about incidents revolving around what people ask Mahadev to write and read in their letters.
A transvestite contesting the local Sarpanch elections, a 'compounder' who falls in love with the widowed daughter-in-law of an ex-service man, a harried mother who wants to get her daughter married off, Mahadev himself who finds himself falling in love with a lady who comes to him to write to her husband of 4 years working in Mumbai, all make up for a charming narrative.
As it turns out towards the end, the entire movie is the subject matter for a novel being written by Mahadev, under the pseudonym of Sukhdev. Although some of these incidents don't have happy endings the feel-good factor of the movie as such is unmistakable.
A low budget film involving low budget actors. Not sure if it would have gown down well with the Metro audiences. It certainly went down well with me.
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