A revolt with a sepia soul

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Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Se is the true story of a band of 64 revolutionaries — five leaders and their fervent teenage soldiers — who set out with 14 revolvers, a dozen rifles and some chloroform to challenge the British raj in Chittagong.

The Chittagong Uprising, that began at around 10 pm on April 18, 1930, is to Bengal what Jallianwalla Bagh is to Punjab. But under Ashutosh Gowariker’s direction, the powerful and heartbreaking story of these martyred krantikaris is rendered dull and boring. Mostly.

Mostly because the story, adapted (and mildly fictionalised) from Manini Chatterjee’s non-fiction book, Do and Die: The Chittagong Uprising (1930-1934), is so compelling that it moves you irrespective of who is telling it, or how. To be fair, Khelein Hum... has some poignant moments, but the film, at the end, is less than the sum of its parts.

Khelein Hum... is set in Chittagong of 1930 — a sepia world of bicycles and Baby Austins, of wristwatches with nylon straps and women and men in khadi.

A young boy’s voice introduces us to “Hindostan”, the white man’s raj, and the film opens on a field where boys in dhoti-kurta are playing football. Mind drifts to Lagaan and, as if on cue, police trucks carrying aggressive brown men and their white sahib arrive. The boys are shooed away as the cops will be camping there. Irritated, the boys decide to seek Surjya Sen’s help, a swatantrata senani and leader of the local unit of the Indian Republican Army (IRA). Cut to Surjya Sen (Abhishek Bachchan), a mathematics teacher who takes breaks in his classes to talk about Khudiram Bose.

Next we meet his brother in arms, Nirmal Sen (Sikander Kher), then Nirmal’s girlfriend Pritilata (Vishakha Singh) and her friend Kalpana Dutt (Deepika Padukone). Pritilata and Kalpana are keen to join the revolution. Nirmal agrees to take them to Surjay. Meanwhile, other IRA members arrive in Chittagong for a meeting with Surjya. The meeting is underway when the teenagers knock on the door to tell their football field tale. Surjya promises to look into it.

As if touched by his junoon, the boys, on their way back, pluck the “dogs and Indians not allowed” board from the wall of a goras-only club and get thrashed. They return to the revolutionary adda, this time to announce that they want to join the revolution.

The revolution needs committed hearts and hands, and Rs 18,000. So the two women are assigned a task as a test and the boys are interviewed in an engaging montage. Soon, training of the new recruits begins — handling arms and bombs, motivational lessons, funds collection, etc.

As April 18 draws close, Surjya reveals his plan. Five teams will attack five places and take over Chittagong from the Britishers: the telegraph office, the Pahartali European Club, two armouries, and the Nangalkote railway line. The buzz in the “uprising” incubator intensifies, and in this charged atmosphere Surjay and Kalpana steal shy glances. Revolutionaries bring in money, arms and cars, but things start to go wrong.

On the night of April 18, after killing several Indian guards, the revolutionaries find neither Britishers nor ammunition. They can’t take over Chittagong. So they burn the Union Jack at the cantonment, hoist and salute the tiranga and after losing a few teenagers in crossfire, retreat to Jalalabad Hills. But a lieutenant-colonel arrives there with a Lewis automatic machine gun. Many die, some escape. Another attack, curfew, Kalpana is arrested, Nirmal is killed, and finally, Surjya’s trial begins...
Ashutosh Gowariker tells the story of the Chittagong Uprising efficiently. He gets the political tone of those days — when Mahatma Gandhi was preaching non-violence in the mainstream, and in the fringes of the Congress the revolutionaries were itching to do and die — right. And he doesn’t flinch when showing the revolutionaries’ silly mistakes that proved fatal.

But I left the hall disappointed. Here is a director who gave us a fictional Lagaan and yet made us scream for runs as if it were an India-Pakistan World Cup final. And here he has a story that we cannot but love. Gowariker has the talent, and now he had the opportunity to bring to life a stirring chapter of history, to create heroes we would love and remember. But he doesn’t deliver.

Surly Gowariker, I think, was intrigued by the home-spun revolutionaries, but he never fell in love with these Bengalis. Though the film’s pace is languid, he keeps them all at a distance, uninterested in who they are, what they feel and think. Several dramatic scenes are ruined by Gowariker’s passionless and clichéd direction. As a result, Khelein Hum... suffers from low self-esteem. It doesn’t have an emotional core, just a sepia soul.

Abhishek Bachchan plays Surjya as a very grave man who broods, talks in a self-important manner, and seems to have grown weary under the burden of the revolution. But Abhishek redeems himself in his last scene. It’s hair-raising.

Deepika Padukone’s Kalpana is like an exquisite bronze beauty from a Raja Ravi Varma painting. Alluring but behind a sheet of glass.

Though the actors’ mock Bengali pronunciation is sure to infuriate most Bengalis, the supporting actors — young and old — were decent. The film’s songs, rousing and inspiring, are nice.