After a few more antics with the tractor, the two bring out binoculars and pretend to sight an imaginary Chaudhary Baldev Singh feeding pigeons alongside the mustard fields. For them, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge is still their kaleidoscope to the newfound vacation spot of Punjab’s villages. “Molly kept asking me yesterday on Facebook whether I was behaving like Raj, whether I had met any Simran and run into the fields with a guitar strapped on my back, ” Ratan tells Sapna with a grin. Their host, 38-year-old Kanwal Preet Brar, whose farmhouse is poetically called Deep Roots, is excited about entertaining the new admirers of his verdant fields. “Till a few years ago, customers for us only meant buyers at a mandi. Growing and harvesting wheat and rice were the only tasks on these 26 acres of land. Farmhouse tourism has now given me a second livelihood, ” says the farmer, who personally designs the itinerary for his visitors. Afternoons are for grazing and feeding cattle, and in the evening there’s entertainment in the form of village games such as wrestling, kabbadi, gulli danda and kite-flying.

Nearly 60 km away in Patiala, a German teenager and her Indian friends from Delhi are perched on a horse cart, zealously guarding the selection of leafy vegetables that they have plucked from Gary Farms. After a two-kilometre gallop, the cart makes a halt at a signpost that says ‘Village Nanoki: Biggest Little Village of India’. The village has scenery that makes it appear right out of DDLJ - broad canals gushing with blue-green water, tractors lugging cane-filled trolleys to the market and acres of verdant fields.