Dunki flight

We are all angry about illegal immigrants - Rohingyas, Bangla-deshis. And in the case of America, everyone else. But do we really know their story? Do we bother to know those?

Why would we? We see them as terrorists who have come to destroy our country. 

Dunki - a Hindi film is about such immigrants - not from Bangladesh, but from India - from Punjab. Mannu and her friends want to go to London - to earn in 'Pounds' so that they can help to alleviate poverty of their parents. 

Their dream has its root from people in their town who have 'havai jahaj' on their terraces. Those parents whose children have gone to UK, put up a plane on top of their terraces. And they proudly tell the success stories of their kids. 

And these successful kids, come home occasionally and take away the pretty girls as bride, thus breaking the hearts of local young men.

So these trio want to go to UK. And they come across a kusti (wrestling) coach - Hardy  aka Hardayal Singh. 

Hardy - (our super star SRK) was one of the reasons I wanted to watch the film. The super star who is of my age - has he aged and all wrinkled like me? 

Of course I know the film stars use Botox - plastic surgery. He too has used botox and as a result, he looks sad. More so in flash back stories of his youth where the directors want us to believe he is young. 

The movie has not tried hard to show the real struggles of this immigration - where people hide in containers, run in forests, swim in oceans. But again, we all want to see a heroic tale - not a realistic documentary, right?

So the story feels all shallow and has not done justice to its theme, nor stars.

By the way - dunki - a punjabi word means donkey flight where people hop from one country to another - illegally of course - until they reach their destination - usually USA, Canada or UK. And there are hundreds of Punjabis who pay lakhs of rupees to agents, who arrange such dunki flights. And get caught and spend their life in prisons in some foreign land.