Dehradun, April 20 -- Film Review

I happened to see two wonderful Netflix musicals recently, that too back-to-back. Unlike most other movies, they stayed with me for a while. Chamkila and Elvis are very different in terms of location, language and time-frame yet their underlying themes are similar and relevant.

Chamkila is a scintillating biopic based on the life of Amar Singh Chamkila who ruled the musical landscape of Punjab from 1979 to 1988. He was the highest record-selling artist of his times. He was born in 1960 into a Dalit Sikh family and named Dhani Ram. Later, rechristened as Amar Singh Chamkila, he found such unprecedented fame amongst the masses of Punjab that he was known as "Elvis of Punjab". He was so much in demand that...