Shyam Benegal's classic efforts hail him as one of Indian cinemas best directors (Kvltsite tribute to Benegal here ) but after 1993's Sooraj ka Satwaan Ghoda, his work has been quite lackluster, as if driven more by the availability of budgets than a genuine passion for the material at hand. His trilogy about Khalid Mohammed's relatives (Mammo – Sardari Begum – Zubeidaa) and other projects like the Family Planning Commission funded Hari Bhari were mostly ho-hum.

The good news is, Welcome to Sajjanpur (which was originally titled Mahadev Ka Sajjanpur, likely considered too un-hip for the multiplex crowd) is his best work in a long time. It is being touted by the forces of marketing as Benegal's first comedy, although that's not really true. Benegal dabbled with slapstick in Charandas Chor and ribaldry in the scandalous Mandi. Sooraj... is also a comedy, a more philosophical sort. While Sajjanpur will not hold up to the genius of those films it is, most flaws notwithstanding, a pleasant watch.

Our look at the Malgudi-esque Sajjanpur is through the eyes of Mahadev (Shreyas Talpade), reader and writer of letters. Mahadev's penmanship skills make him a center-point of all events concerning the village, be it a compounder's illicit romance with a widow, a mangalik (inauspicious astrological sign) girl's marriage to a dog or the local Don (Yashpal Sharma, typecast but still brilliant) manipulating the electoral strings with letters to the Collector. In the midst of this, Mahadev comes across Kamala (Amrita Rao, sweet), whom he had a crush on when in school. Unfortunately Kamala is already married, with a husband working as a migrant laborer in Mumbai. Her dependence on Mahadev to send messages gives him an opportunity to press his own suit.

Sajjanpur's narrative moves in a leisurely episodic fashion, sometimes too leisurely for its own good. The main problem with the film is that its central story of Mahadev trying to wedge his way into Kamala's life is handled in a tepid manner, far less interesting compared to some of the side-stories. The script is also a little shoddy with several loose ends and half-constructed moments, poorest at the end when the proceedings are closed in a noticeably clumsy perfunctory way. Apart from the loose handling, one has the lingering feeling that the central character needed a little more charisma and acting chops than Talpade to be fully engaging.

Those flaws aside, the film has some really good moments. Its best face is in the political satire, which is classic Benegal. See the scene where the Don is trying to paint the rape and murder of a young girl as a suicide, or his chicanery to get potential rivals to the Sarpanch post disqualified on account of their being Muslims or eunuchs. The love-play between the compounder (Ravi Kissen, suitably bawdy) and the widow (Rajeshwari Sachdev) guarded by her ex-soldier father-in-law makes for some good guffaws before it gets abruptly shorted, and Ila Arun as a fish-eyed mother intent on curing her daughter's inauspiciousness by first marrying her off to a dog is priceless. Benegal does not shy away from introducing serious moments either, even a bit of gore when one of the rivals of the Don is found dead, head smashed in. Sajjanpur is also refreshing in its naturalism, as reflected in the fidelity to the regional dialect, meticulous production design (Samir Chanda) and clean no-frills no-shakycam visuals (Rajen Kothari).

So yes, while it could have done with a shorter running time, removal of its rather tedious songs, and a tighter working of the script's good elements, Welcome to Sajjanpur is still recommended as one of Benegal's most entertaining films of the recent past and definitely one of the better Hindi films you'll be seeing this year.