Daayen Ya Baayen
Director: Bela Negi
Cast: Deepak Dobriyal, Manav Kaul, Badrul Islam
Rating:**1/2
Movie Review: Daayen Ya Baayen This is a debut feature that revels in authentic locations, faces and situations, the base triad that real movies are built on. Daayen Ya Baayen takes us to the mountains of Uttarakhand in the company of the excellent Deepak Dobriyal, and lets us find out in leisurely ways what he is up to, where he’s been, and where he wants to go.
Ramesh Majila (Dobriyal) returns from Mumbai, armed with goodies for his family. The tape recorder (and a colourful back scratcher) is received with some interest but his wife can’t wait for the day she will, like her pompous brother and his citified wife, be out of the rural neck of woods.
But Ramesh has other plans. Something has gone awry, and his intention is to settle in his village, but not out of a sense of defeat. He wants to do something that will take him out of the stasis that holds him, and his region.
Part of that change is brought on by his winning an unexpected prize: a jingle brings a shiny red car in its wake, and suddenly Majila becomes the guy everyone wants to be friends with, even if the car can’t go up to his house, high up on the hillside. Daayen Ya Baayen takes a gentle, humorous route to where the car, and its proud driver, end up. The ride turns slack occasionally, skidding a few times. I could have done with more sharpness in both the story and the story-telling, but, at the same time, the pleasures of a film like this, made by a director who knows her mountains and its people, are unmistakable: there’s not one ounce of fakery in Daayen Ya Baayen