Jugnuma (The Fable)

The opening scene, filmed in a single continuous shot, establishes the atmosphere for a film aptly named Jugnuma – The Fable. We observe the main character, Dev (Manoj Bajpayee), as he washes his face, prepares himself, dons his wings, and leaps off a ramp from a mountain, just like that. This film by Raam Reddy, who previously entertained us aplenty with Tithi (2015), encompasses a bit of everything.

Cinema, in its kaleidoscopic array of expressions, occasionally offers us stories of rare splendour—narratives that shimmer with originality, thematic boldness, and imaginative audacity. While not all Indian films aspire to transcend conventional storytelling, every so often emerges a cinematic gem that dares to diverge. Jugnuma, directed by Raam Reddy and released this week, is precisely such a departure—a masterstroke of magical realism, a genre seldom explored within the realms of Hindi cinema. Set against the resplendent backdrop of spring in 1989, Jugnuma unfolds in an isolated colonial mansion perched precariously atop a Himalayan cliff. Here resides Dev (essayed with quiet intensity by Manoj Bajpayee), alongside his wife Nandini (Priyanka Bose), daughter Vanya (Hiral Sidhu), and son Juju (Awaan PoKoot). Revered by the surrounding villagers, Dev is a benevolent landowner who generates employment through his vast and flourishing orchards. Yet, this pastoral idyll is soon shattered when he discovers a patch of mysteriously charred trees. What begins as a small anomaly gradually spirals into a series of inexplicable conflagrations, each one more disturbing than the last.

Coming at a time when the debate about the original inhabitant and the migrant/trespasser is raging across the world, young filmmaker Raam Reddy mounts a fable that fascinates with its subversive tone and veritable voice. The atmospheric visuals and magic realism remind one of Marquez and Manoj Night Shyamalan, but Raam sets up his own leela in the hills of the Himalayas. In Jugnuma, Dev (Manoj Bajpayee) lords over the orchards that once belonged to the British masters. He has inherited the colonial privilege that he delegates to the locals to nurture his sprawling estate. Mundane meets the magical, as Raam opens a window to the Dev’s introspective nature. Suggesting the misplaced pride of being self-made, the genial master makes his own wings and glides over the hills to keep a check on the locals who work on his estate, look for possible trespassers, and perhaps test his boundaries.

Jugnuma (The Fable) begins with a startling unbroken shot in which a seemingly ordinary morning turns extraordinary. Within a few minutes, writer and director Raam Reddy establishes the contours of this world and primes us to expect enchantment and mystery. The story is set in the spring of 1989 on a vast estate in the Himalayas. Men tend to beautiful, bountiful fruit orchards which spread over three mountains. But underneath the mundane – the owner Dev (played by Manoj Bajpayee) and his family, his manager Mohan (played by Deepak Dobriyal), the workers spraying pesticides to make the yield better – is a beguiling and wondrous world of fireflies, nomads who don’t speak but who exert some sort of benign power and a fable about fairies who live on earth because they don’t realise that this isn’t really their home.

The real and the magical collide pretty early in Jugnuma. Translating roughly to ‘firefly’ (jugnu) ’tale’ (nama), the sophomore directorial of National Award-winning filmmaker Raam Reddy is distinguished by a surreal yet warm moodiness. It commences with a single continuous shot. One that defines the rest of this film which is quite unlike anything the Indian space has seen. Dev (Manoj Bajpayee) walks out of his British-styled bungalow that breaks through the mist-capped hills somewhere in the northern part of the country. The camera feverishly follows his back as he makes his way to the outhouse in front, nodding a greeting to those who come within his eye view. Once inside the outhouse, he carefully slips on what look like a pair of giant feathered wings, walks out to the edge of a wooden board jutting out of a cliff and jumps off it. A few seconds later, we see Dev’s silhouette, the wings attached to his back, gloriously ‘flying’ around. It is a beginning that immediately arrests attention, making you want to know more, even as you are entranced by the mesmerising and mellifluous atmospherics of the film.

Raam Reddy’s Jugnuma – The Fable opens with a long, unbroken shot. It’s the summer of 1989 in a Northeastern Himalayan town, and Dev (Manoj Bajpayee), a middle-aged and soft-spoken landlord, starts his day by walking to the toolshed in the backyard of his colonial mansion. It looks like an average routine. On the way, he greets his wife Nandini (Priyanka Bose), his playful son Juju (Awan Pookot), his two dogs Jack and Alex, and a couple of locals. The camera follows him into the dark shed, where he straps something onto his body and strolls down a path. He’s wearing what looks like mechanical wings and, before it fully registers, he casually jogs off a cliff edge, flaps those wings and flies into the valley. This is how he surveys the thousands of acres of the orchard estate inherited from his grandfather. It’s pesticide season; his route is wider. I’ve seen many striking movie beginnings, but none like this, where reality nonchalantly collides with fantasy in the same breath. In the next few minutes, we know why.

Some films come up to you, and slowly draw you in, until you are firmly within their spell. This is what happened to me when I watched ‘Jugnuma: The Fable’ : the quality of life being lived in the slow lane — the film is set in 1989, in the upper reaches of the Uttarakhand hills — where nothing much seems to happen, one day passing uneventfully into another, is ruptured by the growing feeling of something more, something elemental, something beyond our grasp. What writer and director Raam Reddy, with the help of cinematographer Sunil Borkar, and a cast which is one with the plan, has managed to pull off is quite remarkable. The two-hour film weaves in the prosaic, the quotidian, with quiet strokes of magical realism, leaving us wondering about our world, and the tantalising possibility of other worlds.

Set in the late 1980s, Dev (Manoj Bajpayee), an orchard owner, lives with his family in a picturesque house nestled in the Himalayas. Each morning, he steps into his workshop, straps on a massive pair of handcrafted wings, and casually heads to a nearby cliff—where he takes flight like a bird. This surreal ritual is surprisingly normalized in the household. His wife (Priyanka Bose), and children— a teenage daughter (Hiral Sidhu), and a younger son (Awan Pookot) —accept his flying routine without much fuss. They even discuss the wings with curiosity, as if they were just another part of life in the mountains. While Dev soars above the orchards during his frequent flights, he entrusts the day-to-day operations of the lush estate to his trusted manager (Deepak Dobriyal), who oversees the workers and assigns tasks. With no phones, television, or internet, the family of four embraces a slower, more intimate rhythm of life. Their evenings are spent hosting friends for intimate dinners, singing classical songs, lying under the open sky to stargaze, chasing fireflies, and listening to the whispers of the wind and mountains around them. As you get lost in the bewitching charm of this idyllic life, the orchard mysteriously catches fire. Dev suspects a foul play and holds his staff accountable. Villager also doubt the nomads-monks with horses who are seen in the region. Who wants Dev out?