Jaadugar and the magical world of the small-town Bollywood romance

In the recently released Netflix film Jaadugar —the story of small-town magician Meenu (Jitendra Kumar) and his quest to woo Disha (Arushi Sharma) and win a prestigious local football tournament—the audience is dropped right in the heart of Neemuch, on the border of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Much of the film’s comedy derives from some typically small-town motifs—the hyperlocal pride associated with one’s mohalla lording it over other neighbourhoods on the sports pitch, the derision allotted to divorcees, the fear inspired by your love interest’s grouchy, Grinch-like Dad. These are all time-tested tropes associated with the Indian middle-class, and in my eyes they remain fertile topics for both comedy and drama. In fact, Jaadugar makes better usage of these tropes than a lot of vastly bigger and better-funded Bollywood films. Directed by Sameer Saxena and written by Biswapati Sarkar, Jaadugar coasts on the affability of its leading pair, especially Jitendra whose performance in the Amazon Prime comedy show Panchayat has been appreciated by audiences all over the country. Yes, the action gets a little bit derivative in the second half, and slightly older audiences will remember _Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander_ on more than one occasion. But on the whole, I quite enjoyed Jaadugar , and for me it absolutely works as a feel-good comedy suitable for audiences of all ages. Jaadugar also reminded me of how far Bollywood has come in terms of depicting small-town romances featuring decidedly middle-class characters—the classic ‘small film’ featuring small-scale dilemmas that nevertheless assume larger emotional proportions. To me, this is a subgenre that should be protected at all costs because of its innate good-heartedness and the versatility of its performers.  Small towns, big hearts Modern-day Bollywood wasn’t always this invested in the small-town romance. Consider Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, the ur-text for most Bollywood romances that followed in its wake. DDLJ set the tone for Bollywood romances to be set amidst big, flashy, conventionally gorgeous locales, especially in Europe and the UK. A particularly famous one-liner from the film even spells out this ‘prosperity doctrine’ in no uncertain terms: “Bade-bade shehron mein aisi chhoti-chhoti baatein hoti rehti hain” (Small things like this aren’t uncommon in big cities). The 2000s, therefore, were dominated by NRI romances, a la Nikhil Advani’s Kal Ho Na Ho. At some point, however, Bollywood realised that the flashy locales and gorgeous clothes only amplified the disconnect it had with the vast majority of its audiences. Filmmakers needed to tell stories set in smaller towns, not just Bombay and Delhi. Audiences needed to look at a character and find some degree of relatability, something they could both identify and hopefully, root for. Over the last 10-12 years or so, Bollywood has delivered several believable, competently told love stories that focused on characters living in small towns. One of my personal favourites in this context is the film Bareilly Ki Burfi (2017), a kind of 21st century upgrade on the classic 1990s Sanjay Dutt-Madhuri Dixit-Salman Khan love triangle Saajan. Ayushmann Khurana, in the role that arguably consolidated his position as an A-lister, played Chirag Dubey, a small-time writer who falls in love with Kriti Sanon’s free-spirited, tomboyish Bitti. Bitti, however, loves Pritam Vidrohi—the name under which Chirag’s books are written, a mix-up that leads to Chirag enlisting his real-life friend Pritam (Rajkummar Rao) in an elaborate charade. Directed by Ashwini Iyer Tiwari, Bareilly Ki Burfi’s screenplay understood the rhythms of small-town life in a way that largely escaped mainstream Bollywood up until that point. It understood the appeal of an easier-paced life but also the thousand and one frustrations, the pettiness, the stubbornness that one had to deal with on an everyday basis. Khurana’s other great success around that time, Sharat Katariya’s Dum Laga Ke Haisha (2015), was another example of a Bollywood love story that made intelligent usage of its small-town setting (Haridwar) as well as its timeline—the film was set in 1995, at the height of the Kumar Sanu craze across North India. Khurana played Prem, a cassette shop employee and high-school dropout whose parents marry him off to Sandhya, who’s educated and smart — but whose weight is an issue in Prem’s eyes. Besotted with Juhi Chawla films and Kumar Sanu love songs, he wants a Bollywood heroine-like svelte beauty for a wife and soon, makes his contempt for Sandhya clear, much to her distress. The rest of the film is about how Sandhya and Prem learn more about each other’s desires and insecurities, and how they team up to become partners in the true sense of the word. Dum Laga Ke Haisha, apart from being a simply told, inherently good-natured story, also got the period details just right. The Kumar Sanu cameo at the end of the film was the icing, really but there was all this other food for thought. When Nirmal, Prem’s nemesis of sorts, opens a swanky new CD shop, we see how businesses in the 1990s were perennially at risk of obsolescence. We see in real time how the end of one era ushers in the beginning of another and the meta-commentary on Bollywood norms (as seen through Prem’s obsession with Juhi Chawla) drove it all home in style. The song ‘Dard Karaara’, written by Varun Grover, composed by Anu Malik and sang by Sanu himself, is a pitch-perfect tribute to (as well as affectionate parody of) 90s Bollywood. Of course, there have been stellar movies that focused more on the darker side of small-town romances as well— factors like caste, religion and class are frequent barriers for lovers. Anurag Kashyap’s Mukkabaaz, for instance, features a romantic pairing between a Bhumihar boy, Shravan Kumar Singh (Vineet Kumar Singh) and a Brahmin girl, Sunaina Mishra (Zoya Hussain). The scenes featuring their courtship are classic Kashyap, in many ways, especially in terms of the way music has been used. Kashyap know how to write and shoot small-town romances, it has to be said—look at the famous ‘permission lena chahiye’ scene from Gangs of Wasseypur, for example. Here’s a director who understands both the speech patterns and the vulnerabilities of small-town Indians. Neeraj Ghaywan’s Masaan, one of the best Bollywood films of the 21st century easily, had several distinct romances happening within its setting (contemporary Varanasi). Each one had its distinct flavour and all of them featured realistic, believable people who are constrained because of their circumstances, all of which prevents them from expressing their desires openly and fearlessly. Richa Chadha’s character Devi Pathak is a trainer at a computer coaching center (again, a very symbolic choice in the context of the film’s twin themes of modernity and atavism) who goes to a hotel room with student Piyush in order to have sex—sadly they are entrapped by a crooked cop Inspector Mishra and blackmailed, following which Piyush dies by suicide, having slit his wrists in the bathroom. This story arc, as well as the romance between a Dom boy Deepak Kumar (Vicky Kaushal) and an upper-caste girl Shalu Gupta (Shweta Tripathi), are among the most powerful small-town stories to have ever come out of Bollywood. What are the common things among all of these stories? They all have thoughtfully written scripts that (and this is very important) do not shy away from using dialects and variations on Hindi that to the ears of Bombay and Delhi-dwellers, might sound alien. They all have characters with clearly defined aims and aspirations, as well as the structural barriers that are holding them back. Finally, they all feature actors who aren’t unrealistically pretty (except perhaps Kriti Sanon in Bareilly Ki Burfi) and could plausibly blend in with the crowd at Kanpur or Bhopal or Ranchi or Udaipur. The TVF connection To understand how Jaadugar followed the footsteps of these fine stories and created its own distinct world, it’s worth your while to see where the makers come from. The film’s director Sameer Saxena, writer Biswapati Sarkar as well as co-producers Amit Golani and Saurabh Khanna are all alumni from TVF (The Viral Fever), the production house/streaming service responsible for shows like Permanent Roommates, Gullak and Kota Factory. Many TVF products featured middle-class characters in small towns, which is why it’s no surprise that Jaadugar managed to get this aspect just right. SonyLiv’s Gullak, especially, is a personal favourite of mine, a curious, plotless slice-of-life comedy that focuses on the lives of one lower-middle-class family in an unspecified North Indian small town. It has the timeless quality of classic television as well as a distinctly contemporary flavour to the jokes. But the crown jewel in the TVF roster remains Panchayat, the show that they developed for Amazon Prime Video. Jitendra Kumar’s performance in that show alerted national audiences to his talent and hopefully, Jaadugar will lead to him getting a lot more high-quality scripts. For now, though, both Kumar and the ‘class of TVF’ behind Jaadugar can rest on their laurels, having created a small-town romance for the ages. Aditya Mani Jha is a Delhi-based independent writer and journalist, currently working on a book of essays on Indian comics and graphic novels. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.