'Ranj' is a story of a village youth, Amanpreet, who is driven to despair in a hostile big city.
Amanpreet lives in New Delhi, India's capital, away from his home and his fiancee, Geetu. He yearns for all that he has left behind. Employed as an automobile tools salesman, he is humiliated by his co-workers while his boss constantly threatens to fire him. His harassed work-life and poverty lead to night-time encounters with strangers- a drunk and conniving auto-rickshaw driver who swindles him out of the little he has; as well as a street prostitute, long past her prime, who he hopes will help dissipate his melancholia. The same night, in a fit of rage, Amanpreet almost murders his former employee who has not paid him his dues, for which he is sent to prison. Returning after serving his term, he sees that the idyllic calm of his village has been replaced by political protests and violence. He must now make a final bargain for solace.
'Ranj' is the story of a village youth, Amanpreet, who is sent to a big city against his wishes. He carries the burden of his parents' expectations of managing to build a better life for himself there. The film dwells on the last two days of Amanpreet being on the edge in the city. New Delhi has a significant role play here. Like any other vast and chaotic landscape, having its victims and survivors to tell tales of their trying times, it too runs at its own pace, indifferent and unbiased, neither favoring one nor sparing a soul. Since Amanpreet is psychologically not wired for a city life, he finds the air hostile. He cannot throw down the gauntlet because he never carries one on him. It is not his battle by will. Thus, he suffers all along in pitiable silence and guilt, and roams the city like a cursed loner, sporadically erupting in anger, as and when he gives in to the lure of his self-destructive tendencies. Even following his acute moral crisis, contrary to what one would expect, Amanpreet does not re-awaken. He is no 'hero'. He is an ordinary young man in his ordinary toil, who fails to come to terms with his realities. On another plane, the film's theme is an anti-thesis of the notion of the modern-day progress, underlining the ills of modernization in our society, where materialistic growth has been hopelessly allowed to preside over social quietude.
