Can a movie without garish designer clothes, multi star cast,flesh flashing item songs, silly humour, loud dialogues, trick photography, absurd stunts et al be categorised as a documentary? If your answer is 'yes', then 'Swades' is not for you.

'Swades' is a self exploring journey of Mohan Bhargava(Shahrukh Khan) who is a smart & successful project manager in Nasa's Space Kennedy Centre who after a span of solitude years feels the urge to meet his nanny Kaveriamma and convince her to spend the rest of her life in more pleasures & comforts with him, she has been a motherly figure to him and many. Search of Kaveriamma lands him in a small village of Charanpur in India where she lives with Gita(Gayatri Joshi), a school teacher by profession and choice. Mohan is in a total contrast situation from where he came and his short stay extends when he comes across many vital unsolvable realities of that village, which help to form a ladder to his inner evolution. And of course Gita's simplistic & idealistic personality helps in develop a loving bond between the two.He takes on himself to provide the basic need of Electricity(generate) thru Water and even tries to open the innocent/ ignorant eyes of many to the unknown and known facets of the world. Mohan's every move, every word gets him closer to the rest and himself . Mohan is capable enough of taking any sound decision at this juncture of his life, so does he fall prey to a comfortable lavish lifestyle layering it in the name of career progression and loosing his real identity or does he want to go beyond the norms and return to his roots and make his life more worthwhile?

The soulful music and the intertwining of songs in the script keeps you absorbed through out. The movie at no point goes overboard in conveying the thoughts of the director(Ashutosh Gowariker),his penchant for detailing and apt characters placement are worth experiencing. I forgot to mention SRK, this is what you'll feel too cos here Mohan Bhargava is at forte which says a lot about the actor himself and even the director who has the capability to extract effective performances from one and all.

The only downside maybe the duration of the movie, but the sincerity of the movie will gently glide you all the way.

'Swades' will be remembered for several firsts(or in a long time) to its credit: * The title of the film. * The promo pictures of the film very different which doesn't emphasise the hero, but the people. * First Indian Cinema to be shot in Nasa. * Subtle romantic moments between the lead actor & actress. * Debut of a senior veteran director Lekh Tandon. * A main-stream cinema not following a rigid path of 'entertaining' cinema.

Someone correctly said 'It is difficult to be simple', but its not at all difficult to watch and muse over this simple piece of work!