'Band Baaja Baaraat': Much Ado About Something

Has Bollywood finally headed out of Bombay (a.k.a. Mumbai), when it comes to the storyline and setting? A spate of movies following Dibakar Banerjee's timeless 'Khosla ka Ghosla' (2006) seems to suggest so. For, gone are the days when movies unfolded only in Mumbai unless it spun a village yarn. Movies that were city-agnostic and seldom delved into the lives foibles of its dwellers.

Banerjee's engaging diatribe on Delhi's land mafia and its characters - right from the righteous Khosla, the scheming Khurana, the "Chaalu" son Bunty to the support cast of the expletive mouthing Sahni Saheb and the slimy but helpful Asif Iqbal - made it special to those of us who've lived in Delhi and recognized those characters.

Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra ('Delhi-6'), Rajshree Ojha ('Aisha') and Habib Faisal ('Do Dooni Char') carried the exploration further and in this line of charming movies comes 'Band Baaja Baaraat', arguably the best movie from the Yash Raj camp in recent times. The movie is neither pretentious nor over-the-top with characters that you're most likely to meet in Delhi's teeming middle class "Kalonies" (colony).

The movie tells a tale of two ordinary people who come together, with diverse reasons, to set up a wedding planning agency. More than a story of enterprise and success, the movie sneaks into the largely uncomplicated minds of its two protagonists Bitto Sharma of faraway Saharanpur and Shruti Kakkar of middle-class Janakpuri.