Trend Guru

Welcome to Sajjanpur – a small village in Northern India where letters are still the only mode of communication, power cuts are a part of daily life and riding a two-wheeler is like a distant dream.  An aspiring novelist Mahadev (Shreyas Talpade), earns his living by reading and writing letters for the illiterate villagers. Through these letters one gets to know the life stories of the film's dozen odd characters.

And in these often-satirical stories, director Shyam Benegal chooses to touch upon rural India's topical issues such as widow remarriage, caste politics and superstition. But after a point he establishes just too many sub-plots in a case of biting off more than he can chew. So while you have the protagonist's love story developing in one scene the next one shows him caught between two rival politicians. This goes on right till the end where a good ten minutes are utilised to explain what happened to the various characters who were forgotten in the course of the film. Read More