Dunki on Netflix: Shah Rukh Khan & Rajkumar Hirani's film trends on social media again

Vicky Kaushal won the Filmfare for Best Actor In A Supporting Role for his role in Shah Rukh Khan-starrer "Dunki".

A scene from 2023 Bollywood film Dunki has become a favourite of WhatsApp forwarders. In it, the female lead Manu (Taapsee Pannu) can be seen struggling to explain how to make aloo parathas to an immigration officer. Potato, water, fire, bud-budd (sound of water boiling), kuttu (smash), "enter potato" - Manu gestures, stumbles and exasperatedly gives up. That a scene like this elicits laughs today, is testimony to how far we have come as a once-colonized nation. Where on the one hand, moving to London is still seen as aspirational but aping the West (and doing it badly) are now sources of gentle humour.

Dunki, the story of three desperate immigrants who take the so-called donkey route to enter London illegally, quietly dropped on Netflix India today, making Dunki trend again on social media. The film - starring Shah Rukh Khan, Taapsee Pannu, Anil Grover, and Vikram Kochhar, with a scene-stealing cameo by Vicky Kaushal - released in theatres on December 21, 2023; the same day as Salaar 1 starring south heavyweights Prabhas and Prithviraj Sukumaran, sparking Bollywood vs South Film debates.

While Salaar released on Netflix on January 20, Dunki dropped on Netflix earlier today (February 15) - nearly two months after its theatrical release; a norm now for big-budget films that are expected to do well at the box office. Made by Rajkumar Hirani at a reported budget of Rs 120 crore, Dunki made around Rs 430 crore in worldwide box office collections.

Dunki also followed some of the other best practices for releasing a film since the pandemic - for example, it had eight trailers, dubbed drops. These were released ahead of the film, with the first one dropping on SRK's 58th birthday on November 2, 2023.

Kaushal won the 2024 Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor, for his role in Dunki.

The story

NRI Indians have been the subject of many Bollywood films and series, with SRK's Dilwale Dulhania Le Jaayenge being a prime example (the NRI groom enters Dunki, too, but as a catalyst in a story that is tangential to the main plot). The illegal immigrant experience has also been captured in mainstream Hindi films (one example is Guest Iin London starring Kartik Aaryan, Kriti Kharbanda, Paresh Rawal and Tanvi Azmi). Yet somehow Hirani's film straddles reality more confidently than most - at least in the Hindi film universe (Punjabi films on the subject run the gamut from comic to serious and even tragic, usually with more mealy inputs).

A case in point are the explanations for why some homes in Punjab have water tanks resembling aeroplanes installed on their rooftops. How fraudsters promising immigration visas scam young people to part with their savings as well as their parents' money. And how, once people set out on the path of illegal immigration, the options to turn back become hopelessly narrow.

Earmark this one for your weekend watch.