Please, everything else but 'Punjab'

Shakti Samanta’s An Evening in Paris did wonders for Sharmila Tagore – and the bikini for Indians. It also made the City of Lights better known for many cinema-goers. A few years before, the same director with the same set of actors underlined Kashmir as a holiday destination in Kashmir Ki Kali. Samanta understood that using and celebrating real locations and places, he was not only making his films more alluring, but adding a brand value to these very places. The case with a film such as Gangs of Wasseypur or Mississippi Burning are a bit more complex, considering they are set in real places that are depicted not so rosily. So when the censor board demanded that Abhishek Chaubey’s Udta Punjab remove all references to Punjab, including in its title, even those completely unaware of the subject matter the film deals with – rampant drug addiction – realised that tadka mein kuchh kala hain.

But considering that the censor board headed by the venerable Pahlaj Nihalani is mature enough to not have a probem with depictions of substance abuse itself – and huzzah to that – will the de-Punjabification really de-Punjabificate Udta [Fill in your choice of place]? Let’s just say with the Eiffel Tower behind her, Sharmila couldn’t have been starring in An Evening in Jalandhar.