File photo of Pancho
Loosely inspired by Ang Lee’s epic film, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, this movie is about a young and dashing Punjabi Black Panther named Pancho. Pancho has had a loving, bucolic upbringing in a verdant village not far from the Wagah Border. The village is full, of course, of resplendent Sarson Dey Khet and women dressed in colourful attire, either drying clothes or operating agricultural implements or hand-pumps. One day while foraging, Pancho quite unexpectedly crosses paths with a beautiful female leopard. Hailing from a small forest just outside Lahore, Pakistan, the leopard (whose name is LipSink) loses her way after being hot on the trail of a deer for many days; the deer incidentally is obese and looks quite succulent, but is, surprisingly, quite a nimble animal. LipSink not only manages to lose the deer, but also accidently crosses over into Indian Territory.
As may be expected, what follows is love at first sight: Pancho cannot take his eyes off LipSink’s slender, spotted body, while LipSink is gawking at Pancho, sparing neither his whiskers nor tail while doing so. However, all said and done, Pancho is a chivalrous panther who hasn’t forgotten his traditional roots, and LipSink is a homely leopard with a spotless character (if not spotless body). In other words, they don’t get it on. Pancho escorts LipSink back to her home outside Lahore, braving bad weather, mosquitoes and the occasional Taliban personnel during the journey. The bond between Pancho and LipSink deepens further during this period. Before they part , they decide that they will marry, come what may, and that too with the consent of the families on both sides – a decidedly uphill task given that he is a Hindu (and Indian) panther, and she, a Muslim (and Pakistani) LEOPARD!
The film traipses from gaiety to histrionics and is lightly peppered with episodes of humour of a markedly simian calibre. All the usual issues – the India-Pakistan and Hindu-Muslim divide, nationalism, gender discrimination, Cricket, and inter-species fornication – get their due mileage using nauseatingly contrived and pedestrian settings and imagery.
The film ends on a happy note, but this starts to become evident only in the last 5 minutes of the film: Pancho and LipSink finally get the families’ approval after enormous trials and tribulations on both sides of the border (and also on both sides of the film screen).
They get married on Wagah border, a fitting symbol given the fact that most characters in the film suffer from borderline personality disorders. The offspring borne out of wedlock is a cute little Lanther (Panther-Leopard Hybrid) who is promptly offered dual citizenship of India and Pakistan by the concerned authorities. The films ends with a rustic scene: women dressed in colourful attire are cheerfully singing Punjabi folk songs, drying clothes and operating agricultural implements and hand-pumps.
