67jatt like that · reportage
AUGUST 2019Punjabi audience. They want humour that is raw,
gruff, loud, without it necessarily being physical.
Such comedy is best written through dialogues.”
The difference between Hindi and Punjabi audi-
ences, he said, was that “while the Hindi audience
is dying to have a laugh the Punjabi audience
wants to die laughing.”
According to Anurag, Punjabi comedies can only
be written by someone who is rooted in Punjab,
and knows what will be funny both in the villag-
es and in the cities. Rattan, who was a salesman
of paging devices in Ludhiana through the early
1990s, seems to fit the mould. He told me it was his
interactions with ordinary people that gave him
most of his characters. “I was in a job where I had
to talk to people, no matter who he or she was. I
was always trying to sell a product. Maybe, that is
where I understood the way Punjabis talk, having
to establish a rapport with them, trying to sell
them something. I had to make them smile before
they would even begin listening to me carefully.
Isn’t that what we are doing as writers in film?”
Since Jatt and Juliet, Rattan has delivered come-
dy hits such as the 2013 films Singh vs Kaur and Tu
Mera 22 Main Tera 22. What stands out in Rattan’s
writing is his ability to take the mickey out of his
own culture. There are, for example, the alcoholic
Punjab policemen in Jatt and Juliet 2, and the dha-
ba-running couple in Canada in Jatt and Juliet—
characters straight out of Punjabi lore. These films
do little to challenge the stereotype of the Jatt
Sikh, constructed over centuries—in local folklore,
in the glorification of martial races by the British,
and more recently in the Deol family’s Bollywood
oeuvre. But it is the local knowledge of people
such as Rattan that imbues these characters with
a little more complexity.
Despite several breaks from conventional writ-
ing, most Punjabi music and film remain centred
on the journey of the male protagonist. Jatt and
Juliet also carries forward another trope common
in recent Punjabi music and film. The hero of thefilm is often someone who is rooted in his culture,
isnotverywelleducatedandstrugglestospeak
English.Dosanjhhasdescribedthischaracter
as“UrbanPendu”—a term that literally means
a villager, but is sometimes used in a derogato-
ry manner. The Urban Pendu, however, has no
inferiority complex about these shortcomings.
The female protagonists, however, are well-edu-
cated, speak English and are from comparatively
wealthier backgrounds. There is often an arc of
the heroine initially being disgusted by the pen-
du’s lack of sophistication, and eventually coming
around to liking him for his good heart. Punjabi
films are yet to award women the luxury of being
a good-hearted pendu.besides making dosanjh a crossover celebrity,
Jatt and Juliet also gave birth to what has now be-
come the biggest production house in the Punjabi
film industry—White Hill Productions, run by the
cousins Gunbir Singh Sidhu and Manmord Sidhu,
both 38 years old.
Gunbir and Manmord started out as line pro-
ducers of the film, which was initially being pro-
duced by the Ludhiana-based Darshan Grewal,
owner of the Punjabi music channels Josh and
Tadka. In 2011, it was Grewal who brought togeth-
er the team of Anurag, Dosanjh and Rattan.
However, after the film overshot its initial
budget, Grewal could not provide more funds.
“The film had a stop-start journey,” Anurag, whom
I spoke to on the phone while he was shooting the
Akshay Kumar-starrer Kesari, told me. “We ran
out of funds on multiple occasions. Our Canada
leg of the shoot began without a producer, which
meant we had to be innovative and adapt in the
way we were going to shoot.”
A large portion of Jatt and Juliet takes place in
Canada, specifically Vancouver. While there are
few roving shots of the city or overhead surveys
of its landscape, the viewer gets other cues that
establish the location as Canada. A majority of
the film takes place either inside a bungalow, or in
what looks like two restaurants.
“When we were looking for a bungalow to shoot
in Vancouver, the line producers couldn’t get us
anything because of uncleared payments,” Anurag
said. “I then contacted my mother, who had once
told me about a student of hers who had bought a
house in the city on a hill. This family opened up
their house for us and even though we turned it
upside down we managed to finish the shoot with-
in ten days.” To ingrain Vancouver in the viewer’s
mind, Anurag kept returning to a bench with the
city as its backdrop. Punjabis living in the city still
visit the spot and take photos, he told me.
The Punjab leg of the film, as well as post-pro-
duction, was not smooth either, Anurag said. “WeThe hero of the film is often
someone who is rooted in
his culture, is not very well
educated and struggles to
speak English. Dosanjh has
describedthischaracteras
“UrbanPendu”—a term that
literally means a villager,
but is sometimes used in a
derogatory manner.above: The cousins
Gunbir Singh Sidhu
and Manmord
Sidhu, both 38 years
old, who run White
Hill Productions,
have become the
most powerful men
in Punjabi cinema.
courtesy white hill productions