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

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.