‘Dug Dug’ review: Sparkling look at the commerce and curiousness of faith

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Ritwik Pareek’s film opens with the image of a temple on a hill after dusk, prayer bells on the soundtrack. This gives way seconds later to shots of distant highway traffic and a great reverberating spaghetti western guitar chord. A man stumbles out of a dive bar, slurs a farewell “Jai siya Ram” and rides off into the night.

In the world of Dug Dug, the distance between sacred and profane can be covered in one drunken lurch.The opening stretch, around 11 minutes, is as mesmeric as anything I’ve seen in this decade of Indian film. Walking out of the bar, the man stands in semi-darkness, takes a swig from a quarter bottle, tries to light a beedi. He’s successful on his third try.

At this exact moment, lights come on overhead, a brilliant mesh of blue and purple neon. A gravelly voiceover mulls the mystery of life. The man sets off on his motorbike, straight down the middle of a badly lit highway.

More ominous twangy music. Vehicles whiz past; some curse at him and he curses back. He veers off the main road onto a less crowded one, but having got this far, skids and crashes.

Under a gaze of a lurid billboard announcing a magic show, he lies, gasping. The camera pans away just in time for a passing truck to run him over.The deceased, we learn the next morning, was known as Thakur Sa. He was a local of no great importance, and the early reactions to his death are mild shock but mostly indifference.

Having sent off the body, the cops—two young policemen and one on the verge of retirement—bring back his Luna motorbike to the station. After dark, they start drinking. The next morning, the bike is gone (there’s a wonderful unbroken shot when the older cop realises it’s missing and panics).