Jalsa roughly translates to fun, and it’s safe to say that sanjay sahu is an epitome of fun.
when you first meet him, he comes out as an eccentric, perpetually drunk Genius who does not have a serious outlook on life. he drinks Every Day, pursues PhDs for fun and teaches martial Arts like it’s just another pastime. Not a single moment in the first half suggests otherwise.
if i think of a character who’s lost every valuable thing they own, every person they love, i imagine someone broken. someone who has lost complete hope and faith on life and the world.
but Starkingly, sanjay sahu is none of these things.
only during the interval we realize the problems he’s been through. the guilt, the hunger, the pain of seeing your family die in front of you, these are things that Shake a person’s worldview. and they Definitely shook sanjay sahu as well. that’s what prompts him to become a naxalite.
what fascinates me about his character writing is that, from a third person perspective, he’s constructed like a character with no visible interior life. He reacts, entertains, deflects, but never reflects. We are never invited into his emotional space. And maybe that’s deliberate.
Because as the film progresses, and as we go on this journey with him, his layers begin to peel away.
sanjay sahu never talks or even Acknowledges his past except during the interval. it’s as if he’s deliberately telling the audience and himself, to not pay attention to any of it. all the trauma, the times when he hated everything, he doesn’t want to refresh any of the core wounds he’s been through. because Some people deal with the past by revisiting it. Others build personalities so convincing that the past never gets invited into the room.
even during the multiple confrontations he has with damodhar reddy, he never comes across as a guy who’s angry or serious. he lands big punches at the goons, uses fun, almost satirical dialogues With him.
i remember a constant criticism circling around jalsa’s tone. you see pawan kalyan being this stoic naxalite and in the next scene he’s doing all sorts of funny things with prakash raj. but what if that tone is the whole point?
if i understood something about sanjay sahu, i think it’s this: he has endured so much pain in his life that he doesn’t want it anymore. all of the trauma he’s been through, he wants to forget all that and enjoy his life. maybe that’s why he behaves the way he does. he goes out, has a burger, and falls in love with the sister of his ex- girlfriend, and is Seldom serious.
i think that’s what jalsa was trying to tell us back then, to get away from the past. to not look at the past and feel bad, but rather, acknowledge it and never look at it ever again.
and maybe, somewhere down the line, you’ll get to a day when you finally stop thinking about it, and it doesn’t hurt anymore.