66 THE CARAVAN
jatt like that · reportage
He understands little of the world but
is good at heart. He is like that squirrel
in the Ice Age films, chasing something
we know he won’t get, but that is what
makes it lovable.” While Shampy also
wants to go to Canada to marry a gori,
he is unable to accomplish either of
those goals. Fateh does make it to Can-
ada and is able to make a white woman
fall for him, only to realise that he
would rather be in Punjab and marry
the Punjabi woman he loves.
“It is all about how you write your
characters,” Rattan added. “If you
know your characters well, if you can
write them the way you see them in
your head, they will stick in the au-
dience’s minds. People who look at
Punjabi cinema from the outside may
think that it is all about a lot of gags or
jokes that we list on a whiteboard. But
we work on our characters just like any
writer writing a screenplay would.”
Rattan was born and brought up in
Amritsar, and moved to Mumbai at an
early age. While doing odd jobs to make
ends meet, he started assisting direc-
tors. Jihne Mera Dil Luteya was his first
writing credit, before Jatt and Juliet the
following year.Rattan told me that humour comes
quite naturally to Punjabi culture. He
pointed to a trend in Hindi comedies of
setting families in Punjab or as Punjabi,
such as in Jab We Met or Tanu Weds
Manu. But Rattan finds these portray-
als to be superficial. “Hindi writers
who try to write about Punjabi families
think of Punjabi culture through token-
isms,” he said. “The pairi-pauna type of
culture, where they think that authen-
ticity can be arrived at by introducing
these standard tropes. Some of the
comedy written in this way might be
funny, but it will rarely be funny for the