Glow in the Dark

TWO THINGS swim right up to the top of Imtiaz Ali’s biopic of Amar Singh Chamkila, the 27-year-old Punjabi folk singer who was shot dead in 1988, in mehs amp ur, a small village nearJa land h ar.

I mt iazalih as go this mo jo decisive ly back with this film, breaking a long dry period plaguing him since his last hit in 2015, Tamasha. And that there’s no one quite like Diljitd os anjh, who brings a shining sincerity and authenticity to the role of Chamkila, whose songs and records still have a bestseller status in not just Punjab, but other pockets which both understand and appreciate the very specific triangulation between the singer and his song, and the time-andplace he came from.

Who was Amar Singh Chamkila? Why are his songs, brimming with sexually explicit lines, and double-entendres, speaking of cosy devars and bhabhis, and other taboo desires, so iconic? why, indeed, is he an icon, heads and shoulders above the long line of Punjabi folk songsters who have had a murky relationship with a hypocritical society which both loved and hated their music, and whose very presence becomes a threat to gatekeepers of religion, and ruling dispensations? Why is he still heard, and why, even more crucially, is he still relevant?

Chamkila, dubbed the ‘Elvis of Punjab’, was a classic disruptor, an outlier who challenged the tight barriers of caste and class, which keeps people in their place for there st of their lives. He rose above them to inhabit a space very few do: as a performer, entertainer, story-teller, a symbol of a fight against oppression, reviled and revered in turns.

Ali’s film uses several devices to recreate Chamkila’s story, flashbacks within flashbacks, several sutradhars, computer graphics, and an avowed licence of dramatic liberty: the final result, at nearly 2.5 hours, is one of the better, full-bodied biographical sketches in Hindi cinema, which sweats the small stuff in order to paint the big picture, and which doesn’t shy away from showing us the subject’s not-so-appetising aspects.

His extraordinary journey, from a dirtpoor hovel where he lived with his drunken father and family to a performer whose popularity took him to sold-out shows in the Middle East and Canada, is played out in the film. His early friendsturned-foes, his meeting with Amarjot Kaur (Chopra, lending able support) who becomes his partner on stage and in life, his group of supporters are all in here, as is his constant struggle to keep himself grounded despite his success, which clearly wasn’t difficult because he never really forgot who he was, and where he came from.

In several places, ch a mk ila’ s plain speaking —‘ main yeh hija ant a hoon, maine yeh hi dekha hai’— as a response to his naysayers, who called his songs ‘lecherous’ and ‘dirty’, dubbing him a blot on society and religion, could have turned out specious. But in the way Dosanjh, who has clearly internalised Chamkila’s hard-scrabble life and pain, and distilled it into his fine-grained performance, puts it, it comes across as saying it like it is.

At every turn, even as he keeps climbing higher, from the Punjab akhaadas to the Toronto stage, where ‘Amitabh Bachchan performed just before him’, to his cassettes and records selling ‘in black’, just like the Bach chan blockbuster tickets, he is confronted by the forces who were uncomfortable with am an who sang frankly about desire and lust, flinging all caution to the winds, when his audience demanded those songs.

It was also a time when turbulence in Punjab which led to the prevalence of‘k ha ad ko os ’( militant outfits) led up to the creation of Bhindranwale, and the launching of Operation Blue Star. In the film, we see Chamkila caught between threats from religiousgatekeepers who demand that he stops with the singing of his ash le el songs, and from militants who extort money.

All he was, was a lower caste man who pulled himself up from abject poverty ,‘ an ordinary man’ who understood the power of giving people-like-himself what they wanted. There was weakness in him: in the way he abandons a first wife and embraces Kaur, there is a clear evasion of the truth; in the way he leaves behind his loyal Tikki Paaji (Batra), there’s a hard-edged pragmatism.

Ali has spoken of piecing together the Chamkila legend from many sources, a few primary, but many secondary. The effort showsinthedetails,butitalsoshowsthedifficulty of finding the sweet spot between grubbyrealityandretrospectivemyth-making. The narrative is marred by the English translations of the lyrics (that’s an OTT problem, of trying to make a story universal), which come on like italicised graphics. The flashbacks, from the real Chamkila and Amarjottothefictionalones,whileshowing anamazinglikeness,alsobecometoomany; and the use of so many sutradhars becomes heavy. But to Ali’s credit, there isn’t an overt flattening, showing a pleasing confidence in the way he uses AR Rahman’s compositions to bouy the bawdy, salty lyrics. He doesn’t draw back from letting us listen to what Chamkila sang. It is a clear win. It also helps thatalltheactorshaveperformedtheirsongs live.throughthemusic,anddosanjh’slivedin act, we get a powerful, moving portrait of an artiste who lived and died by his beliefs.