Dhak Dhak review: An uneven but enjoyable joy ride towards fulfilment and freedom

If someone is keeping record, probably thousands of jacketed, ungroomed men make the annual journey from Delhi to Leh on motorcycles tuned to wake up sleeping villages and sedate deodars. It was a novel concept, decades ago, but the environmental strain these Instagram-inspired pilgrimages have put Ladakh under, now makes for resoundingly poor dystopian anxieties. If you’ve been on this route any time of the year, you’d probably have spotted heavily armoured men meandering through traffic, seeking enlightenment and whatnot. But when four women decide to take the same journey, their flaws, their burdens and their unshackled selves yield pleasantly different results. Dhak Dhak is essentially a feminist road trip, that though it doesn’t alter the outlook about necessary journeys that feel like ordeals, does offer a satisfying companion piece to the more masculine notions of that over-abused term – ‘wanderlust’.

Ratna Pathak Shah, Dia Mirza, Sanjana Sanghi and Fatima Sana Sheikh star as women seeking agency, dignity, redemption and perspective in a film that plays it by the book before amending it with a brand-new chapter. Sheikh plays Sky, a rowdy but self-willing influencer, carrying a traumatic recent past. Sky makes videos about automobiles, predominantly bikes. When challenged to produce content which is ‘rooted in a story’, she chances upon the grandmother of an acquaintance – the electrifying Ratna Pathak Shah, as the Punjabi widow Mahi. Mahi has recently won a motorbike in a lucky draw but rather than celebrate, she finds herself piled under the ignominy of burdening her uninterested daughters and their equally apathetic husbands. She learns to ride, subsequently beeping on Sky’s radar. The two decide to take a trip to Khardung La, the highest motorable road in the world, to serve the twin purpose of content and contentment.

Joining Sky and Mahi on the trip are Uzma (Mirza) and Manjari (Sanghi). While the former is suffocating in a toxic marriage, the latter reels from under-confidence stemming from the overprotective nature of her single mother. The backstories are amiably distinct, if stereotypical. Not much is provided in the way of a nuanced ledge here but the leap itself feels cheerily relatable. Most of us who lead embattled, unremarkable lives, seek and probably construct similarly unremarkable solutions. These women are cinematic types, but it allows them to become beacons for the other’s loss of hope. It’s convenient but also gives the fourfold nature of a plot a certain symmetry. The four team up, bond, quarrel, confess and make-up on a journey of several ups and downs. There are some charming soft touches, like Manjari’s interaction with a surprisingly helpful truck driver and Mahi’s spicy entanglement with a foreigner.