Punjab—the word evokes a plethora of histories and emotions. Of music, myths and merry. Of inclusive faith, revolutionary spirit and violence. These days, however, it also conjures a spectre—a haunting of the K-word. Drugs and decay. A youth that dreams of an abundant Punjab in foreign lands. Broken families and hardened faith. Popular Hindi cinema, too, has felt these changes. Within recent films and shows such as Udta Punjab (2016), Manmarziyan (2018), Dunki (2023), Pataal Lok (2020), Tabbar (2021), Kohrra (2023), CAT (2022) and more, one hears the lament of a lost spirit. What happens, then, to Hindi cinema which depended on Punjab to give it a jolt of energy? It responds in two ways. It excavates Punjab’s history to deflate earlier myths and infuses Punjab with new ones. Laal Singh Chaddha (2022) and Amar Singh Chamkila (2024) are these responses.

While it might seem that not much is common between the two films beyond being titled after their eponymous protagonists, there is more here than meets the eye. Aamir Khan plays the titular Laal—a Sikh man—for the first time in his career, while Diljeet Dosanjh—a Punjabi singer-superstar—appears without his turban in Chamkila. Both actors have been invested in the cultural ethos of Punjab in Hindi cinema—Khan in Rang De Basanti (2006) and Dosanjh in Punjabi films as well as Phillauri (2017). Imtiaz Ali, who directed Chamkila, has provided us with a regular dose of “Punjabiyat” in films like Jab We Met (2007), Love Aaj Kal (2009) and Jab Harry Met Sejal (2017), perhaps more than any other contemporary Bollywood director. This investment in “Punjabiyat” is evident most powerfully in these films’ use of Punjabi music, where they draw from a rich repository of folk traditions. Laal Singh Chaddha (a remake of the American blockbuster Forrest Gump) and Amar Singh Chamkila are interested in the intertwining of myths and histories in Punjab. They depict how Punjab can be, not just a space of buoyance, but a lens to view the Indian State itself. The antecedent to these films is Gulzar’s Maachis (1996), set against the backdrop of Punjab’s struggles with militancy. Maachis, too, uses songs to mythologize its narrative. In Laal… and Chamkila, songs anchor their narratives within broader storytelling structures as well as the specific history of Punjab.

Advait Chandan’s Laal Singh Chaddha begins with the song “Kahaani”—a white feather floating and gliding through the skies and into a railway station, being pushed and pulled in several directions by a ceiling fan, a broom, a moving train and a food vendor before eventually landing at the feet of the turban-wearing Sikh protagonist, Laal Singh Chaddha (Aamir Khan). This opening sequence acts as an allegory for the rest of the film, where Laal— as he lives through major events in the next four decades— often finds himself in situations beyond his control. He lives through these events like a feather, with its grace intact. He doesn’t bring about any significant change but exists nonetheless as a feather that can’t be explained or altered, that will find a way to float. The lyrics of the song say “Kya pata hum mein hai kahaani ya hain kahaani mein hum” (what do we know if we are in the story, or the story is within us).

In contrast, Amar Singh Chamkila literally begins with a bang—the murder of the singer duo Chamkila (Diljeet Dosanjh) and his wife Amarjot (Parineeti Chopra) —which leads into the song “Baj Baaja”. This pacy song cements the position of Chamkila as a myth, as different kinds of people try and define what he did and what kinds of songs he wrote. It is interspersed with sequences of Chamkila’s childhood, where he keeps noticing a strong undercurrent of sexual desire lurking in the villages of Punjab. Unlike the sweet melody of “Kahaani”, “Baj Baaja” is a cantankerous beginning that foregrounds the persistent violence in Punjab during the height of militancy in the 1980s. The song ends with the working classes and women occupying the screen in numbers. They sing praises of the singer who made desire publicly accessible and acceptable, unlike those who claimed his songs were obscene.

Both Laal and Chamkila are not aggressively assertive characters. They mostly go where life takes them and follow what others tell them—be it Laal joining the Army or Chamkila having to listen to managers, militants and religious orthodoxy. But they eventually decide to check out and be true to who they are. Coincidentally, this is realised through song sequences in both films.

In Laal…, the Sufi song “Tur Kalleyan” (trans: Walk Alone) follows Laal while he runs through the length and breadth of India as years pass him by. Ultimately, he says he’s tired, but by this time his hair has grown and so has his beard. In an earlier sequence set during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi, his hair is chopped off by his mother with a piece of broken glass to prevent his identification as a Sikh by an angry, riotous mob. Post “Tur Kalleyan”, he ties his hair in a pagdi as “Ik Onkar”—a Sikh religious composition—plays over the sequence. This sequence denotes Laal’s acceptance of an identity that was forcibly taken from him. The lyrics of “Tur Kalleyan” expound the value of the individual, exemplified by the stanza “bani hijr mein raataan angeethiyaan, bata koyle warga jalbhun kar tenu ki mileya” (trans: your nights have become like braziers because of separation, what have you gained by burning like coal). While the immediate reason for his run is his separation from his lover Rupa (Kareena Kapoor Khan), the song charts Laal’s journey as he learns to let go and live life by appreciating small things, the diversity of our country, the wonders that nature beholds. But unlike a similar sequence in Forrest Gump where the run through America mostly plays out comically, “Tur Kalleyan” is sombre and reflective, befittingly ending on the banks of Varanasi—signalling a change in government in 2014. Making Laal a religious minority, when translating from Forrest Gump, adds an additional melancholic tone to the film, but not a defeatist one. Laal emerges as a figure of quiet resilience in violent times.

Chamkila, on the other hand, chooses to be less quiet. The song “Ishq Mitaaye” captures the explosion in his popularity as things take a turn for the worse in 1980s Punjab. With visuals of militancy and of the brutal suppression of it by the Indian State sliced in, the song features Kumud Mishra, appearing in a cameo, stating, “When there’s crisis in the world, people crave entertainment even more.” The lyrics of the song go “Long live the fire inside me, let it burn and create new life. I emerge from the fire shining bright, my spirit will shine through.” Archival footage from 1980s Punjab, featuring protestors throwing stones at the police—as it shoots tear gas at them— is juxtaposed with people dancing at Chamkila’s performances, both actual and recreated. This leads into the refrain “Main hun Panjab” (I am Punjab) — a phrase that bellows with the contradictions and energies that Punjab was producing and still produces. Chamkila’s resilience is loud, garish, and militant. It cannot be contained, which is why it is extinguished with bullets, and his murder unresolved.

Laal and Chamkila, therefore, share contrasting relationships with fire. The former expresses ambivalence about making noise in the face of violence but lives with dignity nonetheless; the latter tries to drown out the noise of violence with his music. Ironically, the films’ off-screen lives invited the exact opposite response. Laal… faced the triple whammy of boycott calls, mixed reviews and poor box office, while ...Chamkila—a film explicitly about censorship—released on Netflix without much controversy and with praise from both audiences and critics. Nevertheless, both these films are significant additions to the evolution of Punjabi culture in popular Hindi cinema. As the prelude to “Baj Baaja” says, “Chahe koi sajde karda, ya tumbi te gaave, wakhra wakhra sabda rasta, ek manzil te jaave” (Whether someone prays, or sings, all have their own paths, but their destination is the same).

Piyush Chhabra is a Ph.D Scholar of Cinema Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He works on the entanglements between law and different media forms.