Fortuitous as it may sound on the day when ‘Dunki’, the latest offering from Raj Kumar Hirani releases all over the world, European Union has passed a law tightening the immigration regulations governing entry of migrants from different countries into Europe.
Another fortuitous thing about the release of Dunki during the last week of December, whether it is by design or sheer coincidence is that in Punjab December is the month when most of the migrants from Punjab descend on to their pind (the native village), to be away from the harsh winters, for socializing as also for marriages of their children and the two months of December and January is the time when the business of all varieties and kinds boom in Punjab driven by the lavish spending of the NRIs.
Such is the urge for migration that in one of the villages in Jalandhar which provided Raj Kumar Hirani the trigger to dabble into the subject, was a milestone in one of the villages in Jalandhar that I had seen, where it was written ‘Caneda’ (yes that is how it is pronounced in Punjab) 13500 miles away. So the target has been inscribed in form of a milestone to be achieved by hook or by crook which Dunki tries to encapsulate.
Lalton village which is the hub of the activity in Dunki is not your conventional village at all. It is a village located on Ludhiana Sangrur highway having all the modern food outlets an NRI would be patronizing and the driveways to these food outlets harks back to the ambience back home either in ‘Caneda’ or in ‘Amriccca’. While driving back through Lalton I always used to wish that all our villages be transformed in the way Lalton has.
And what to talk of the IELTS (International English Language Testing System), the supposed English-speaking machine which proclaims to transform a rustic Punjabi into an English speaking gora- the reference template to create humour in Dunki- and it indeed is a template of humour which one needs to sit through to understand. Both the teachers and the students are in the same boat as far as understanding the nuances of the language is concerned, and the personalized interpretations that they make of English in colloquial terminology creates amazing humorous situations which Raj Kumar Hirani has peppered Dunki with.
And Raj Kumar Hirani might have been inspired by one water tank to build the story of Dunki, fact of the matter is in the Doaba region (the region between two rivers of Punjab – Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Ropar etc.) the water tank designing is an art and a big vertical. Most of the water tanks are designed in the share of an airplane locally referred to as Jhaaz, either symbolizing the effort to catch the jhaaz or as they say in Punjab, assi te jhaaz fad lene hain- or we will catch the plane, or symptomatic that the residents have taken the jhaaz and left the pind.
Such is the importance of migration riding on the IELTS in Punjab that when the present government of Punjab had taken over, they had announced setting up IELTS training system as a part of the government initiative to infuse qualitative-ness in the candidates.
Migrations happen from most of the states, but the way it has evolved to become a vertical in Punjab spawns’ stories around such migrations and for the Punjabi cinema it is a frequent template to weave the story around.
May be, post Dunki we could see a Gujarati migrant story as well. After all, in the diaspora they rub shoulder to shoulder with the Punjabis in matching the numbers and their story also needs to be told to the public.
