India, July 29 -- A few months ago, hit by a familiar wave of homesickness in the United States, I did what so many in the diaspora do: I went looking for home on a screen. I grabbed a hot cup of dudh-patti, logged onto Prime Video, and picked a Punjabi film that made waves in theatres and has now reached global streaming audiences. I settled in expecting light entertainment: Verdant landscapes, familiar humour, and the comforting cadence of my native language. Instead, I found myself wincing, wondering what story we are choosing to tell the world about who we are. The premise hinges on a husband taking a second wife because his first marriage hasn't produced a child-a dilemma served up as a mainstream comedy. The film was a box-office hit, but watching it from afar, the premise felt deeply unsettling. Bigamy is illegal. More to the point, we live in an era where modern fertility treatments, adoption, surrogacy, or simply choosing a fulfilling life without children are part of everyday reality. Against that backdrop, framing a second marriage as the go-to remedy for infertility feels less like harmless nostalgia and more like a regression. Watching it, I couldn't help but think of another cultural powerhouse: South Korea. Korean cinema and television have built a global empire precisely because they treat storytelling with seriousness, nuance, and contemporary relevance. This isn't a call for censorship-filmmakers should explore whatever they like. But movies don't exist in a vacuum. They shape perceptions, normalise behaviours, and tell the outside world who we are. That is especially true in an age when visual media reaches audiences far beyond the communities in which it was produced. That matters immensely for a diaspora as vast as ours. From North America to Australia, Europe, and Africa, Punjab lives far beyond its geographic borders. That is precisely why Punjabi cinema carries a special responsibility: To create stories that Punjabis can proudly share with the world when they want to explain where they come from and what their culture represents. A strong script can transform a regional film into a universal story and present Punjab as a society that is confident enough to engage with contemporary realities rather than retreat into outdated assumptions. Perhaps that is why this movie left me wishing that our filmmakers would aim higher. Punjab possesses a rich literary tradition. Writers such as Amrita Pritam, Gurdial Singh, Nanak Singh, and Kulwant Singh Virk left behind extraordinary stories of depth and social insight. Our cinema needs to start trusting great writers as much as it trusts bankable stars and reliable slapstick formulas. The next masterpiece of Punjabi cinema doesn't need to be invented from thin air-it might already be waiting on a bookshelf....