Patiala House

With its formulaic perspective and wishy-washy characters drawn from British sitcoms, this is no Bend It Like Beckham. Or even close

Patiala House is a set piece that never opens out to the milieu in which it is composed. The Sikh expat population in London is not a stationary ethnic group, but you would think that is has been motionless since the 1960s. The patriarch, his compliant wife, their docile progeny and obsequious minions are all takes from English sitcoms on this South Asian community. Hindi cinema has no business to patronise this bilge.

But this is what happens when a director is unfamiliar with an immigrant community and produces an anachronism like Gurtej Singh Kahlon (Rishi Kapoor), a man who’d 17 years earlier ruined the career of his talented cricketer son by banning him from playing for racist, post-colonial England. Now 34 years old, the fast bowler still practises his skills at night, while trudging to work at an Indian grocery store every morning. The movie is a fairytale about how Parghat Singh Kahlon (Akshay Kumar) decides to live his dream of playing for England and inspires his extended family to revolt against the ageing despot of Southall.

In Bend It Like Beckham, where a Sikh girl in England defies her conservative family to play football, you see a completely different ethos and the marking of a generational shift.  That film detailed the inner lining of the community, while keeping the outside world of English social life intact, even letting the awkward interaction between the two societies produce humour.

Here, in Patiala House, the perspective is a formulaic, rootless directive from the Subcontinent, not from the diaspora in the UK. We are given a guided tour of the Indian Joint Family and then handed our security blanket, cricket. But you will have to pass the Nikhil Advani test and cheer for England.

About The Author

Ajit Duara