Small Town India On Roll For Bollywood Films

It seems this is a great time to belong to small-town India. A slew of such films are expected to hit the theatres in the coming weeks and the one beating the rest of the small town dramas to the turnstile is director Shree Narayan Singh's Batti Gul Meter Chalu, the story of electrical power theft in North India. The film is inspired by real-life incident. This will be followed the next week by Vishal Bhardwaj's Patakha and Sharad Kataria's Sui Dhaaga. All these are films set in small towns and explore the aspirations disappointment and ultimate triumph of the ordinary working-class hero of the small-town hero. Says Shree Narayan Singh, the director of Batti Gul Meter Chalu, a film about the electricity issues faced by the residents of small towns, “I personally relate to the story as I come from a small town. As residents of metro cities, we enjoy a lot of comforts. But in small towns, even a minuscule issue can become a massive problem. There are so many more subjects waiting to be explored, stories that need to be told.”

“People want to see their own country,” affirms his producer, Bhushan Kumar, Abhiraj Minawala, who’s making his directorial debut with Loveratri claims to have discovered just how culturally rich Baroda is while shooting there. “The flavour of the city has not been seen in cinema in recent times. Also, what adds value is the audience in these towns. Our reach increases so much when people connect with our films,” he says.

Aanand Rai who produced last week's well-received mofussil rom-com Manmarziyan and some really big small town dramas recently like Shubh Mangal Savdhan and Newton thinks of the trend of moving to the small towns as a reclamation of our very rich literary and cultural heritage. Says Rai, "There are so many stories to be told in these small towns. I think the time for these stories has come now." According to former chairperson of the censor board producer  Pahlaj Nihalani, such stories have always had an audience. "But some filmmakers are too busy hunting for locations abroad to look at their home. There so many eye-catching cities in India that are yet to be explored"

Until recently, Bollywood’s had a special affinity for picturesque foreign locations that are out of everyone’s reach. But now, we’re seeing more and more filmmakers going back to their roots. Jaccky whose upcoming film Mitron has largely been shot in Gujarat, says, “We have seen so many films that depict Punjabi culture, Maharashtrian culture, and South Indian culture. But we haven’t seen too many that show Gujarati culture, so this is an attempt at something new. I think Gujarat as a backdrop adds a different flavour to our film.” Call it what you will, the flavour of the season or the new formula for success, we sure are loving it.

Varun Dhawan, Rajkummar Rao