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Welcome to Sajjanpur is a story of small village where letters are only mode of communication. Director Shyam Benegal chooses to touch upon rural India's topical issues such as widow remarriage, caste politics and superstition in this film. But after a point he establishes just too many sub-plots in a case of biting off more than he can chew.
Welcome to Sajjanpur gives you a ride to your village life. For some, it will bring back life spent in villages during summer vacations and for others, memories of a life they have left behind for the proverbial search of a pot of gold in the city.
Mahadev [Shreyas Talpade] is one of the few educated young men in Sajjanpur. His ambition is to be a novelist, but finds it easier to make a living by writing and reading letters sitting next to the post office. His ability to write persuasive letters makes him popular with the largely non-literate population of the town. He writes some interestingly witty, some intensely passionate letters to help people achieve their results. In effect, the villagers throng to him because they feel he has some magic in his pen.
Aware of this power, he soon uses his talent to manipulate people with amusing and sometimes not such amusing results which he later realizes is wrong. But when Kamala (Amrita Rao), his school friend and childhood sweetheart, comes to him to write a letter to her husband who has been in Mumbai for the last four years, Mahadev sees his opportunity of spending life with Kamala. He lets his imagination go wild and mixes his reasoning with Kamala's utterings in the letters he writes to Bansi, her husband.
He almost manages to convince Kamala that her husband does not love her, and they come inches close to forging a lifelong bond. Then comes the letter, which explains the truth about Bansi. Mahadev is a shattered man and he realizes that what he was trying to tell Kamala was wrong; build her up against her husband who had left her with his mother. He now decides to make amends and sets out in search of Bansi in Mumbai. This is the central story of Welcome to Sajjanpur.
On the acting front, Shreyas Talpade is just superb. He is the life of the film. Amrita is a revelation. Her body language, her innocence and her angst are just flawless. Ila Arun is funny. Rajeshwari and Ravi Jhankal are delightful.
On the whole, the film is totally based on the shoulders of Shreyas Talpade. This movie really has potential to stay at box-office and will possibly do good business.
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