Cast: Sugandha Garg, Siddhant Behl, Anurita Jha, Sadhana Singh, Samir Sharma, Chandan Gill, Kartick Sitaraman
Director: Shefali Bhushan
Ask any Punjabi to explain what or who Jugni is and they’ll all collapse into frustrated convulsions, knowing deep in their Lohri-lit warm hearts exactly what it is and yet not being able to articulate or explain. I’m a Punjabi, so of course I’m going to try and explain. Don’t mind the convulsions.
The origins of the word “Jugni” are still being contested, but as used in folk songs, Jugni symbolises an itinerant woman — or has been described beautifully by someone, a “free spirited feminine energy” — who goes from one place to another to discover and articulate the zeitgeist of that time and place.
Shefali Bhushan’s Jugni is powered by that “free-spirited feminine energy”, and that’s not limited to her lead, Vibhavri or Vibs (Sugandha Garg), a Mumbai-based music director who, on a whim, takes a train, general class, to Morinda, Punjab, to meet and record a folk singer Bibi Saroop, whose rendition of some Bulle Shah songs have been haunting her.
She reaches the house, in Hassanpur, but instead meets Mastana (Siddhant Behl), who ignores her quest and request and sings to her songs about kidney, Sydney, Vancouver… the ones he sings on stage, often.
Some strange, needless suspense is built up about Bibi Saroop which amounts to nothing more than some tension in the house between mother and son about the old and new.
Mastana (named so, probably, after the famous Asa Singh Mastana) wants to sing songs that he can connect to, songs that speak of his reality in his language, one that he understands and can communicate with feeling.
Or, as his mother says, with scorn and frustration, “Tui matkan-waale gaane.”
Bibi Saroop believes, reverentially, in the purity of music, and sticks to Bulle Shah.
Vibs, the cool gal from Mumbai (fashioned after, probably, the fabulous Sneha Khanwalkar), carries a slightly patronising, affected air and her appreciation of the jameen-se-jude people and their songs feels very artificial.
But, this fakery is a part of all cinematic, life-altering journeys undertaken from cities to villages. Every time someone embarks on it, we the viewers sit with the village folk, eyeing the city people as slightly phoney, and village people as real. That’s our inherent schizophrenia which almost always gets showcased in awkward, contrived scenes on screen. We must get over it.
In between glimpses of Vibs’ life back in Mumbai, the film brings in more characters — Preeto, Jeeta Jazbati — and throws crumbs suggesting what might happen. Soon Bibi Saroop is forgotten, and the story takes off as we sensed and, well, feared.
Thankfully, debutant writer-director Bhushan doesn’t force the circle to close at the end, but leaves it ajar, infusing some poignancy in the possible possibilities of life and its journey.
Jugni is a straight, simple film whose wow moments lie in the film’s shockingly good soundtrack, by composer Clinton Cerejo, and the very talented lead actor, Siddhant Behl.
The film has brilliant songs sung by Vishal Bhadwaj, A.R. Rahman and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, and one Bulle Shah's Hatt Mullah that's almost ruined by Bianca Golmes' super-pretentious and self-conscious crooning. All of them are picturised to showcase the music. Behl plays a simpleton villager, a role that could have easily gone the goofy and bechara way.
But both the writing and his acting skills don’t just keep it from spiralling down the stock character route, but he invests it with so much emotion and complexity that it was a pleasure to watch him. I can’t wait to see him in another film, another role.
Sugandha Garg’s Vibs is also a clichéd character — a city girl, outsider, who travels to dehat to find talent. Yet she manages to keep it believable.
The film’s dialogue, with liberal use of colloquial Punjabi, were mishri to my starved Punjabi ears. Watch Jugni to enjoy the music and I hope there is Babaji di full kirpa on Siddhant Behl.
