Jugnuma (The Fable)

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?

All it took for Raam Reddy was one film and a non-professional cast to get noticed by film pundits globally. Century Gowda, in his stunning debut Thith,i remains an unforgettable figure in modern Indian cinema. Nearly a decade later, Reddy is back with his second feature. It’s called Jugnuma (The Fable in English). Far more refined in scale and featuring some of the country’s finest actors, the film is nothing like the filmmaker’s maiden outing. If Thithi’s rural Karnataka setting felt as if it were made by someone who grew up in those surroundings, Jugnuma radiates an anecdotal quality. Set in the Himalayan foothills, Reddy’s new film takes us to 1989 amid apple orchards, wildfires, an Indigenous community, and a blue-collar clan in awe of their employer. Jugnuma opens with a man named Dev (Manoj Bajpayee) brushing his teeth in the morning. He interacts with his family (in English) and the staff (in Hindi). Within minutes, he heads straight to the outhouse, straps on a pair of wings, and leaps off – inviting no adverse reactions from anyone. So, if normal mortals take a morning stroll, Dev takes off to fly in the open sky.