Express News Service
Two details at the start of Kaagaz instantly turned me off. First, we hear the voice of Salman Khan (the film’s producer) deliver the narration replaced, quickly and inexplicably, by the voice of Satish Kaushik (also the film’s director). Then comes village scenes straight out of a government broadcast. It’s ample indication that, despite its unique plot, Kaagaz will take the most obvious route to tell it.
Bharat Lal (Pankaj Tripathi) is an ordinary band master in Amilo, UP. At his wife’s urging, he agrees to get a loan on his ancestral land, only to discover that his relatives have declared him dead on official records.
âKaagazâ is a biopic of a man declared dead on paper (by unscrupulous relatives out to usurp his property), who struggles against all forces to be declared âaliveâ again so that he can take a loan to expand his businessâhe plays a wedding band. This man, Bharat Lal (Pankaj Tripathi), lives in the Azamgarh district of Uttar Pradesh and has a humble income but is happy with his loving wife (M. Monal Gajjar) and son and his decent income.
When he discovers what has been done by his relatives, he fights tooth and nail against the âsystem,â refusing to give up, come what may. He is ridiculed, taunted, insulted, even beaten physically, he exhausts all his savings and sacrifices his livelihood but to no avail. He even tries to take to crime or legally punishable activities like offending a judge (Brijendra Kala) to get himself arrested so that his name is documented down on paper as an accused. Finally, he even forms an âAll-Indiaâ association o
Pallabi Dey Purkayastha
Story: In order to keep his band-baja business afloat, Bharat Lal (Pankaj Tripathi) approaches a local bank in Uttar Pradesh for a loan. Soon after, he realises that his uncle and his sons have declared him legally dead and snatched his share of the piece of land that the family had jointly owned.
Review: When they joke about nasbandi (vasectomy) and the Emergency losing steam, it dawns on you that the setting is late 70s. And during that remarkable period in the history of India, there lived a man – in a small hamlet in the northern part of the country – who was stripped off his family inheritance by fraudulent means. And the worst aspect of this unfortunate occurrence is that it was his own kin who had declared him legally dead over the tiny fraction of a land he co-inherited with them.