Band Baaja Baaraat is a Delhi ki bhenji. It talks like one, walks like one, and even conducts its love and business affairs like one. And just like all bhenjis, it is real, spunky, self-assured and, once you get to know it, endearing.

Band Baaja Baaraat (BBB) is set across the city from Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding at the Sainik Farms. BBB lives in West Delhi — a world of matching contrasts where the colour pallet is gold, magenta, yellow, red and green. Here Papajis take chartered buses and mummyjis’ friends bring colour photos of boys. This is a world where the high point in the lives of Narangs, Kakkars and Sharmas is the wedding of Nikki, Binni, Bobby, Sunny or Manpreet.
Shruti Kakkar (Anushka Sharma) takes the U-Special from Janak Puri to DU every day, carrying along a scrapbook of dreams and wedding themes. Shruti, you see, wants to become Dilli ki top-class wedding planner. Her own wedding-shedding can wait.
In a grimy hostel room in DU lives Bittoo Sharma (Ranveer Singh). He mostly talks annt-shant and often does aivain time-pass with girls. He and his friends are bhukkars, so they crash parties for some drinks and leg pieces. In Bittoo’s world, Thapa is “Oye, Thape”, business is binis, and hundred is hndead.
Bittoo and friends slime their way to the food counter at a sangeet nite where he encounters Shruti and is attracted to her. He makes a CD of her dance and presents it to her. But Shruti is not interested in any love-shav, and talks to him instead of her business plan. Since no setting seems possible, Bittoo leaves.
But Bittoo’s father has ganne ka business which he doesn’t want to do. So when his father arrives to take him home, Bittoo talks of his binis — planning weddings — and rushes to Shruti and begs her to make him a partner. Shruti doesn’t want any emotional syappa. But in DU, by god, lots can happen over a plate of bread pakodas.
Bittoo ends up getting her and himself a job with a la-di-da wedding planner, Chanda Ma’am. Things go wrong and soon they start their own binis, Shaadi Mubarak. They get an office, a tempo, split responsibilities and put together a happy team of a phoolwalla, a caterer and a college band.
They survive mostly on veg manchurian and chaomin, and though sometimes there is confusion and pasoodi, their designs are din-chak and their weddings mast. Twenty-six successful weddings later they decide to expand their binis to Sainik Farms. With some maska and senti-talk they steal classy clients and wow the white linen pants off Chanda Ma’am with their loud and delirious wedding tamasha.
After a big wedding, while they are celebrating, Bittoo and Shruti start smooching and end up in Bittoo’s bed. The next morning, Shruti says tum instead of tu, and this scares Bittoo. He doesn’t love her but doesn’t want to hurt her feelings or jeopardise their binis. Tension, fights and they part ways. But neither is successful and Bittoo, tired of playing ice-pice, realises that life without Shruti is no mazza. Though Shruti is engaged, remember that BBB has the approval and monies of Aditya Chopra...
Director Maneesh Sharma’s Band Baaja Baaraat is an adorable, rare gem. Though from the House of Chopras, it is confident enough to reject most of Yash and Aditya’s formulas, clichés and must do’s. It has its own personality and quirks and stays committed to its identity, story, people and milieu. Director Maneesh happily breaks several rules — the first and foremost being picking as its lead a boy so completely unsuited for the role of a hero that till yesterday morning Ranveer Singh was being described as an ugly growth on Anushka Sharma. But clearly, the director knew what he was doing.
His BBB is so finely-tuned to its world that all its scenes are full of West Delhi flavour. I should know. I grew up in Janak Puri.
BBB is detail-oriented and gets every nuance, show-piece and prop right. The film, it seems, was put together by a team very proud of what it was doing. Shanoo Sharma’s casting is bang-on, and Niharika Bhasin’s delightful clothes help Anushka Sharma’s character a great deal. Habib Faisal’s dialogues are so quick and brilliant that I plan to watch the film again just to enjoy them.
But BBB is not without flaws. Nothing really happens for a long time and we don’t get intimate with most of the characters. Also, though the film is distrustful of all things posh and South Delhi, somewhere along the way the corny and crass gives way to antiseptic, opulent scenarios. And then there is one seriously silly moment of weakness made worse by the cowardly act of ascribing it to Shah Rukh Khan — a soulless dance that is allegedly choreographed by Vaibhavi Merchant but has Shiamak Davar written all over it. Yet, all this didn’t really bother me too much. Mostly because I wanted to hug Ranveer Singh.
Newcomer Ranveer inhabits BBB’s warm, middle-class Punjabi world as if it’s his own. He seems free to scratch his balls, which he doesn’t, and do binis his style, which he does. He is the film’s emotional core, and I wish we had gotten to know him a little more.
Anushka seems to be visiting Ranveer’s Delhi. But despite her thin layer of polish, she is essentially a bhenji and well suited to this role. Their chemistry is often crackling and helps make BBB a tip-top film.