Zameen banjar te aulad kanjariya

Let me begin with a caveat – Udta Punjab is not a Hindi movie – nor is it meant for general audience in India for it cannot be understood lest appreciated by all.

It is a dark and intense narrative and yet incredibly funny, that had me chuckling at times or weeping a tear, much to the confusion of others around me in a theater in western India – far far away from the land and its stories that it seeks to mirror without bias and without prejudice.

One of the very many lines in the movie, Udta Punjab, that leaves you stunned, shocked for words, and gasping for more, and of course stated in its intense rawness, while defining Punjab of today – “… aithe zameen banjar te log kanjar …” – “this is the barren wasteland where only pimps and prostitutes live.”

Watching the film was like encountering several painful memories for me that lay usually repressed – whether it be of an addicted relative who passed away eating ‘tablets’ as my Dad put it when I was 9 years old, or of