What to expect from Diljit Dosanjh's ‘Welcome to New York’
"Joh banda khud ka mazaak udaa sakta hai, woh doosre ki khilli kabhi nahi banaayega."
Diljit Dosanjh quotes a maxim in Punjabi and then asks if we knew what it meant. Our response: negative. Dosanjh explained: “We laugh at ourselves, we don’t take pot-shots at others.” The we, in this instance, are the Punjabis. But Dosanjh is also using it to describe his Welcome to New York co-stars who were game to be at the receiving end of jokes.
Written by Dhiraj Bakshi, who has penned Dosanjh-starrer hits like Sardaarji and Jatt & Juliet, the film stars Sonakshi Sinha and includes cameos by Karan Johar, Riteish Deshmukh, Sushant Singh Rajput, Rana Daggubati, to name a few. “He (Dhiraj) called me first and said that a film is being made during the IIFA Awards,” says Dosanjh. “I didn’t understand. I was performing at IIFA Awards in New York anyway. I got to stay longer and do some shopping.”
Humour matters to Dosanjh, a superstar of Punjabi film industry in which he has demonstrated his comic range. In Bollywood, the audiences have not yet seen this lighter side. In fact, they may think of Dosanjh as a more brooding, dramatic hero going by Udta Punjab and Phillauri, his Hindi releases so far. Dosanjh said there’s a telling difference in how Punjabi and Bollywood audiences respond to jokes in films. “I have seen films in Mumbai theatres and here people laugh very easily and quickly,” he says. “I wouldn’t laugh but the whole theatre was laughing hard. I was like "It wasn’t that funny, it was normal". In Punjab, you have to hit them with really hard humour to make them laugh.”
Prod him on what that says about Mumbai audiences and Dosanjh gets a tad thoughtful. “I think people here miss laughing and are too occupied in their work so they go to the theatre to laugh,” he says:
“Punjabis anyways laugh a lot. So they don’t laugh that easily on a joke.” Like a proper Punjabi only a “hard good joke” can draw a hearty laugh from Dosanjh. Which brings us to Welcome to New York, in which he is a recovery agent who has won a trip to attend the IIFA Awards in New York. So does the film have “hard good” jokes? “Sharp, very sharp,” he replies.
Does the film have sharp humour? He clears that he just didn’t see the question coming. So comes the question again. “You will have to see the film to know it,” says Dosanjh. That’s sharp Diljit.
(Courtesy of Mail Today)