The comparisons with Ashutosh Gowariker’s Oscar-nominated Lagaan are inevitable but let’s get this clear, Swades is not a patch on his previous film. One would have expected Gowariker to have given us a film better than his previous one and also one that lived upto the promise of those amazing promos. Instead, he has disappointed us all. But this doesn’t go to say that Swades is completely an unwatchable film, the ‘documentarish’ feel notwithstanding.

The novelty factor is the story, based on a real-life episode. Mohan Bhargava (Shahrukh Khan) is an NRI, working as a project manager at NASA. The guilt of not having kept in touch with his nanny Kaveri amma (Kishori Ballal), and the decision to hunt her down and bring her to the US, takes him to India. He manages to hunt her down, discovering her in a small village Charanpur, living with Geeta (Gayatri Joshi) and her younger brother. So our NRI

hero, in his swanky caravan, lands in this picturesque village, determined to take his Kaveri amma back with him. But he ends up meeting Geeta, a beautiful, idealist teacher he falls in love with, and getting to see the grim realities – caste politics, corruption, complacency, illiteracy to name a few – plaguing his Swades. While he can’t do much about the poverty and caste politics, he manages to solve the electricity problem of the village by starting a hydroelectric project. Reminiscent of the scene in Lagaan where Aamir Khan builds a cricket team to take on the British, Mohan in Swades gets the villagers to work on the project, which predictably is a success.

Definitely a good story but one that has been treated shabbily. Shahrukh Khan is good, no doubt, but newcomer Gayatri Joshi only ends up looking pretty.