The first ten minutes of Dug Dug are intoxicating. A precarious scene of a drunken man (Altaf Khan) riding his rickety Luna down the highway at night is filmed like a dapper motorbike ad: a poetic voiceover, shots synced to a trippy guitar-riff score, an endless stretch of road, aerial sweeps, a lit cigarette, slick lighting, a “Ride Free” surge of adrenalin. You’d think he was ripping an Enfield; he looks invincible. It plays out like a hero-intro sequence. His name carries that punch too: Thakur. But it’s actually a hero-exit sequence. The spell breaks. The man dies in a gruesome accident; the hoarding of a magician is partly responsible. To be fair, he wasn’t even a hero. He is, by all accounts, an anonymous statistic: a lone figure relegated to the margins of public memory.
But tell that to the rest of the film. Owing to a few mysterious (and possibly mischievous) events surrounding the bike — it keeps disappearing from the police station and reappearing at the spot like an obedient pet missing its master — the accident site morphs into a decidedly Indian spectacle. Thakur becomes the fabled ‘Thakur Sa,’ a hero who is mythologised and worshipped through a roadside shrine to his beloved Luna. As the days pass, the romance of superstition mutates into the business of faith. Priests, politicians, devotees and wealthy royals get involved as the lore of Thakur Sa becomes its own entity; alcohol bottles are placed as holy offerings, because a sage declares that even God deserves a break from sweets. Seldom has “that escalated quickly” applied so readily to a…setting. But of course, escalation is the grammar of dogmatism.
Inspired by the legacy of the ‘Bullet Baba temple’ on Rajasthan’s Pali-Jodhpur highway, Dug Dug sprints with the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction vibe, switching between time-lapses and montages like a long-form gag in pursuit of a short-form punchline. Debut director Ritwik Pareek leaves no stone unturned to expand what is essentially a 10-minute satire about blind faith into a wicked 105-minute origin story of religion, monetised spirituality and the loud privatisation of belief. It’s a tough sell, but the gimmick is that Dug Dug is privy to its own irony: the film is designed to resemble a brand spot about the absurdities of selling. Despite being a self-funded project, it thrives on inventive production value and detailing, smart cinematography, an intuitive soundtrack and promo-like rhythm. It’s a brave choice for a low-budget film, because the ‘packaging’ is the language. It cannot afford to look like an indie, which is where Pareek deserves credit for keeping it visually interesting. The craft rarely lags, even when the repetitions run out of satire and the satire runs out of sarcasm.
The novelty of Dug Dug, however, lies in how this packaging mirrors the gaze of a country wired to look up for answers and look down in reverence. India is very much the protagonist of a film with no central (human) character. The film-making then symbolises the restless imagination and escapist lens of a people who are left with no option but to tell themselves lofty stories — dressed as faith and myth — to deflect the fallacies of living. So much of the treatment reflects the ‘theme’ of divine intervention. That intoxicating opening sequence, for instance: the highway ride is a romanticised depiction of Thakur, almost as if it were presenting him the way his ‘followers’ might later imagine him. It’s like they need him to be the cool and carefree guy on the motorbike, not a mangy wastrel on a Luna. Ditto for the constant cutaways of the magician’s face on the hoarding: the hokey zoom-ins supply the lens of those who must believe that there are higher forces at play. Or the shots of a balloon seller inflating a bubble that never bursts. Or the ‘friends’ who eagerly give media interviews and revise Thakur’s life by claiming he was a pious man. Or even the wry pans between small-minded characters in thought.
This same gaze could have easily emerged from an urban, upper-class space. But Pareek walks the thin line between humour and condescension. If anything, there’s a sense of affection — a melancholy beneath the buzz — for a culture that often employs fantasy as a coping mechanism. It’s an approach of someone who is perhaps mourning the demise of good faith. At some level, here’s an independent director telling a story about the systemic abuse of mainstream storytelling. Most of the montages unfold in a frenzied state of prayer, too, as if everyone requires something new and exciting to believe in. The tone keeps reminding us that they all see this world the way they wish to, not the way it is. Even Thakur’s number plate is 369, an ‘angel’ number that signifies a spiritual awakening of sorts. The title (Dug Dug) refers to the thumping engine sound that one associates more with a big motorcycle rather than a pink-and-blue Luna.
This extends to the conceit of why the vehicle keeps bolting from the police station. One of the older constables wonders how he’s spent his whole life without a single incident (a la Paresh Rawal in Mumbai Meri Jaan); without feeling like a law enforcement officer; without any drama in a one-horse town. Most of them, including a younger constable, are so disillusioned with the dryness of survival that they unwittingly will a miracle into existence. As if to suggest that religion must be the solution if science cannot provide the solution. That’s what they’re driven to; it’s not who they really are. The mundanities of reality don’t cut it anymore, so fiction is the only refuge. And if a lie is repeated enough, it rearranges our perspective of the truth. How the fiction is co-opted, though, is in nobody’s control; it’s a tale as old as time. After all, one person’s Dug Dug is another chant for a magic highway. One disciple’s drunken tragedy is another’s wine-soaked temple.