Looop Lapeta and the Legend of Savitri and Satyavan in Cinema

Looop Lapeta (2022)

Our lives are determined by our choices. And, the choices we make in the tiniest of moments have the potential to change the entire course of our lives. "Bas ek moment lagta hai life badalne mein," surmises Aakash Bhatia in his whimsical and colorful Looop Lapeta. His film tells the story of Savi (Taapsee Pannu), who races against time to save her boyfriend Satya (Tahir Raj Bhasin) after he loses a significant amount of cash belonging to a mafioso. Like the three Os in its title, Looop Lapeta provides three different perspectives of the same story, where the different choices of its protagonists impact their eventual destiny. While the film is the official Hindi remake of Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run, Bhatia adds some perspectives and concepts that are uniquely Indian. For instance, at one stage in the film, Satya narrates the mythological story of Savitri and Satyavan to Savi. He tells her about how Savitri managed to trick Yamaraj into giving her a boon that led her to save Satyavan's life. Looop Lapeta is also the story of Savitri and Satyavan. Savi is named after Savitri. Satya is named after Satyavan. Like Savitri, Savi uses all her thinking to prevent Satya from dying. Savi is the one who devises the strategy to get back the money that Satya lost. At one stage, she even throws a stone at a billboard of Yamaraj.

Looop Lapeta (2022)

The tale of Savitri and Satyavan is well known. During the festival of Karwa Chauth, the Savitri-Satyvan katha is often narrated to women who keep a fast for the long life of their husbands. The story was first told by Rishi Markendeya in the Mahabharata when the eldest Pandava, Yudhishter, questioned if there has ever been a woman who had the dedication and love for her husband equivalent to that of Draupadi's. Rishi then narrates the tale of Savitri and Satyavan to Yudhishter. Savitri was the gift from the Sun God Savitr to King Asvapati. She was so beautiful that she intimidated all the men. When she reaches the age of marriage, no man asks for her hand, so her father Asvapati tells her to find a husband independently. She sets out on a pilgrimage for this purpose and finds Satyavan, the son of a blind king. Savitri returns to tell her father that she will marry Satyavan. Narada tells Savitri that she has made a wrong choice as Satyavan is destined to die one year from that day. Her father pleads with her to choose a more suitable husband. Savitri, however, insists on marrying Satyavan. They get married and stay together for a year. When the day of his death arrives, Yamaraj comes to take Satyavan, but seeing Savitri's devotion, he grants her a few wishes. Savitri asks him that she wishes to be the mother of a hundred sons. Yamaraj grants her wish. Since becoming a mother would not have been possible without Satyavan being alive, Savitri tricked Yamaraj and saved her husband's life.

A painting of Savitri and Satyavan

Over the years, there have been many representations of the legend of Savitri and Satyavan in popular culture. When cinema was in its nascent stages in India, the visionary Dadasaheb Phalke made his second film Satyavan Savitri based on the legend in 1914. His film was also mentioned in Prakash Mokashi's Harishchandrachi Factory (2010), which depicted the life of Dadasaheb Phalke. In 1923, Madan Theaters teamed up with Societa Italiana Cines to make India's first-ever international co-production, Savitri Satyavan. The silent film was directed by Giorgio Mannini and starred Italian actors Rina De Liguoro and Angelo Ferrari, playing Savitri and Satyavan, respectively. In 1937, Himanshu Rai, another pioneer of Indian cinema who, along with Devika Rani, founded the studio Bombay Talkies, produced the film Savitri. The film was directed by Franz Osten and starred Devika Rani and Ashok Kumar in the lead roles. Post-independence as well, many other films depicted the story of Savitri and Satyavan. These include Dinesh Rawal's Satyavan Savitri (1963), Shantilal Soni's Sati Savitri (1964), Chandrakant's Mahasati Savitri (1973), and Girish Manukant's Sati Savitri (1982).

Satyavan Savitri in Harishchandrachi Factory (2010)

Savitri (1937)

Mahasati Savitri (1973) 

Starting in the 1990s, there have been a few contemporary adaptations of the story of Savitri and Satyavan. In 1992, Mani Ratnam made Roja, starring Madhoo and Arvind Swami. The film depicted the story of a simple girl Roja (Madhoo), who gets married to Rishi (Arvind Swami), a cryptologist working for India's intelligence agency. Rishi is kidnapped by militants during a secret mission in Jammu and Kashmir. Roja makes herculean efforts, running all over the country, to find her husband and get him released from captivity. The film's theme is inspired by the story of Savitri and Satyavan. Rajiv Menon, the cinematographer of Roja, who was also offered the role of Rishi, said in an interview, "Roja was not the story of Farooq Abdullah or the Kashmir problem, but the story of a young girl who was trying to get back her husband. It was Satyavan, and Savitri re-enacted." In Another Savitri: A Critical Study of Mani Ratnam's Roja, writers Vaibhavi Chaturvedi and Kriti Anand compare and contrast the characters of Roja and Savitri. They write, "Being a modern-world equivalent of Savitri, Roja's devotion is deemed one of the reasons for her husband's emancipation. It is her incessant efforts and dedication that ultimately unites Rishi and Roja. She is depicted as a character synonymous with Savitri, an ideal wife whose life revolves around her marriage."

Roja (1992)

Vikram Bhatt's horror film Raaz (2002) told the story of a couple, Sanjana (Bipasha Basu) and Aditya (Dino Morea), trying to save their failing marriage. They move to Ooty, where Sanjana gets haunted by a woman's spirit. She soon finds out that her husband is connected to the spirit. Sanjana has to race against time to stop the spirit from killing Aditya. Many commentators have compared the angle of Sanjana saving her husband to that of Savitri and Satyavan. In the book Bollywood Horrors: Religion, Violence and Cinematic Fears in India, Aditi Sen writes, "Raaz was a trendsetter; it rehashed established Bollywood tropes, added folklore, and mythology, and introduced the audience to an amalgamation of familiar ambience with subversive content. Raaz uses every formula to first scare the audience, then twist the Savitri and Satyvan story and transform Satyvan into an adulterer. Finally, it appeases the audience by glorifying the sanctity of marriage and reestablishing the patriarchal order." The film's scriptwriter, Mahesh Bhatt, also added in an interview, "The suspense element combined with the age-old attraction towards women who do anything for their husbands, almost like the mythical character Savitri, good music and some nice performances made Raaz such a success."

Raaz (2002)

Param Gill made another modern-day adaptation of Savitri and Satyavan in his film Waarrior Savitri. Released in 2016, the film was the story of Savitri (Niharica Raizada), a martial arts expert who falls in love with Satya (Rajat Barmecha), a US-based guy, and wishes to marry him. However, Savitri's family pandit opposes the wedding as he believes Satya will die soon. Savitri, however, is not convinced and decides to marry Satya. Post their wedding, Satya starts experiencing a series of near-fatal accidents. Savitri becomes his savior and negotiates with the modern-day Yamraj (Om Puri) to let her husband live. He denies the request, and Satya dies in an accident. By some turn of events, she dies and goes to heaven to ask Yamraj if her husband is alive, she should be allowed to live. Given her courage and bravery, Yama grants her wish and sends her back to earth to be with her husband.

Waarrior Savitri (2016)

In NH10 (2015), Navdeep Singh portrayed the story of a young couple, Meera (Anushka Sharma) and Arjun (Neil Bhoopalam), whose road trip goes awry after encountering a group of violent men on a highway near Gurgaon. The men badly injured Arjun, leaving Meera scrambling all over to save his life. The film dealt with the themes of honor killings and violence against women. At one point in the film, a group of villagers celebrates Republic Day. On 26th January 1950, India's new constitution came into effect; henceforth, that day is celebrated as the day the Indian republic came into being. The villagers were celebrating the constitution at a place where the cop says the constitution does not really exist. It is a depiction of irony. The constitution's preamble states the equality of all citizens, but here at this place, equality is a joke. A girl is not allowed to marry someone of her choice. One of the men on the stage narrates the story of Savitri. He says that Savitri was asked by her father to choose her own husband. She could find a husband on her own, and everyone was happy. We see, then, that a few women start dancing on the stage. It is another depiction of irony. The villagers revere and celebrate Savitri, but when Pinky, the daughter of the sarpanch Amma Ji (Deepti Naval), chooses to marry someone, she is killed by her brothers. There are echoes in the story of Savitri and Pinky. Both the girls wanted to marry a man of their own choice, despite their family's opposition. In addition, the stories of Meera and Savitri, too, have a few similarities. Both the women do all they can to save their dying husbands. In fact, in one of the interviews, Navdeep Singh hinted at this angle where he said, "NH10 is more like a road trip gone wrong, but that's just the basic premise as it has much more than that. It's a hugely popular genre in the West, but we don't have many such films here, and that's precisely why we are so excited about NH10, but it's about other things as well. If you recall the mythical story of Savitri-Satyavan, then you'll find some similarities in both the stories."

NH10 (2015)

More recently, Paatal Lok (2020), created by Sudip Sharma, who also wrote the script of NH10, added a few elements of the story of Savitri in the web series. Based on Tarun Tejpal's book The Story of My Assassins, the series depicts the story of a disillusioned cop Hathiram Chowdhary (Jaideep Ahlawat), who lands the case of an assassination attempt of a journalist Sanjiv Mehra (Neeraj Kabi). His wife, Dolly (Swastika Mukherjee), regularly feeds a stray dog named Savitri, who always stays outside their gate. Dolly is prone to anxiety attacks and finds solace in looking after Savitri. Sanjiv's assassinator Hathoda Tyagi (Abhishek Banerjee), does not kill him as he sees him interacting with Savitri. "When a dog love (sic) man, he's a good man. When man love (sic) dog, he's a good man," Tyagi had believed and decided to let go. Yet again, a Savitri saves the 'husband.' Sudip Sharma, in an interview, also added. "We wanted to draw an inference from the story of Savitri and Satyavan. The way in which Savitri saves her husband, Dolly does the same thing here."

Paatal Lok (2020)

Over the years, Savitri has turned into a stereotype of a woman who is a simpleton devoted to her husband. This simplistic view ignores her many amazing qualities. She married a man she found on her own, even though her family was against it. She won over Yamaraj with her intellect by asking a cleverly worded boon. It was her will and quick wit that Yamaraj honored when he gave Satyavan back. It is always worth keeping in mind that there is a lot more to Savitri than her 'Sati Savitri' image.

Dialogue of the Day:

"Day nahi bas ek moment lagta hai life badalne mein."

—Savi, Looop Lapeta

Gehraiyaan—Of Past, Luck, and Choices

At one point in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, the struggling novelist protagonist says, "The past is not dead. Actually, it's not even past. You know who said that? Faulkner. And he was right." A person's past makes up who they are; so, the past lives on within the person forever. Shakun Batra also casts the long and enduring shadows of the past over the protagonists of his third film Gehraiyaan. It is the story of how the past of its characters—Alisha (Deepika Padukone), Karan (Dhairya Karwa), Tia (Ananya Pandey), and Zain (Siddhant Chaturvedi)—continues to impact their present and their future. "I can't live in the past," says Zain. "And, I don't know how to let go of mine," replies Alisha.

Gehraiyaan, meaning depth, portrays that the lives of the children are closely tied to the past of their parents. They inherit their genes, but they also inherit their destiny. And, then, they pass the same to their children, as if traveling through a loop. Early in the film, a young Alisha, in a moment of sartorial frustration, tells her mother, "I feel stuck. I feel stuck. I cannot breathe," when she struggles to wear a shirt. Her mother used to cry by herself in the nights, saying the same thing, "I feel so stuck." Alisha keeps wondering if she will end up like her mother. Stuck. Helpless. Alone. The feeling of being stuck becomes her lifelong companion as she grows up. Her friends moved to the US for studies while she was stuck behind to build a life of her own. She wants to start a fitness app but is struggling to get funding. In the middle of her presentation, her app gets stuck. She has been in a six-year-long relationship with her childhood friend Karan in which, too, she feels stuck. "I don't like being at home. I feel so stuck," she says.

Alisha believes that Karan and her father are the same; they only think about themselves. Her mind takes her back to her father's shifting silhouette on the doors when he fought with her mother, the same way that Karan does when he fights with her. She has an affair with Zain even though he is engaged to her cousin Tia. Alisha's life again replicates her mother's. Perhaps, like Alisha, her mother saw something special in Tia's father, with whom she had a secret affair. The past keeps returning to Alisha, reminding her that her fate is tied to her mother's. 

Tia's life also follows her mother's. Like her mother, Tia trusts people easily. Her mother keeps warning her to be cautious with Zain as she does not want her to end up with the same fate as her own. Tia's father had an extra-marital affair with his brother's wife leaving his wife to fight legal battles. Therefore, Tia's mother wants to protect her. Even Zain's life starts resembling his parents. He abandons Alisha, like the way he left his mother. His father physically hits his mother; he does the same and even goes to the extent of trying to kill Alisha.

But can they really escape the past? Gehraiyaan suggests that they can try, but it won't be easy. They have to make different choices; they have to take chances and start again. Because there is a difference between being stuck and choosing to stay; between being found and finding yourself. Alisha thinks that she has the worst luck in the world. When her presentation does not go well, she blames her luck. Zain tells her to dream big in life. He was not born with a silver spoon either, but he rose in life. He tries to escape the fate of his family. He was lucky, Alisha presumes. "Lucky people never believe in luck," she tells him. But lucky are the people who make different choices to get the things they want, not waiting for something to be given to them. Even the bird then shits on Zain, another sign of luck.

Gehraiyaan's most moving scene is between Alisha and her father, Vinod (Naseeruddin Shah), who tells her that she has to accept the past and choose to move on. There is no need to run away because we all are bigger than our mistakes. "Do my choices even matter, Papa?" she asks him. "Yeh jaanane ka toh ek hi tareekha hai. You give yourself a chance," he comforts her. A young Alisha and her mother had played a game of snakes and ladders. Her mother lost the game when the counter landed on a snake. "Bad luck, I guess," she says. Alisha, too, used to blame her ill-fated luck. Luck, however, is nothing but the probability of an unbiased die. There is an equal chance of getting any number when the die is cast. Her father had advised her mother that one can always start again even after losing. It is a choice even though it is difficult. Like Zain told Alisha, sometimes, one needs to take a leap of faith to get the life one wants. 

Gehraiyaan has been compared with Woody Allen's Match Point for its narrative similarity, but its theme of luck and chances is more in common with Zoya Akhtar's Luck By Chance, another story of the outsiders trying to make it big in the film industry. There was Vikram Jaisingh (Farhan Akhtar), a struggling actor who would do anything to get the opportunity to become a hero. There was Sona Mishra (Konkona Sensharma), a talented actress, also struggling to fulfill her dream. There was Nikki Walia (Isha Sharvani), the daughter of yesteryear superstar, preparing for her debut launch. Sona thinks she did not become a big star because it is not in her kismet to be an actress. Vikram disagrees as he believes that kismet is for those who do not have the strength to make their own lives. Will some other person tell her that she cannot be an actress? Chances are not given; they are made. Kamayaabi hum tak nahi aati, humein kamyaabi tak jana hota hai. Ab apne aap par bharosa karo. Vikram was ruthless and selfish. He would do anything to work his way up, even if it meant betraying Sona in the process. He would stab his friends in the back. He would have an affair with Nikki; he would even flirt with her mother. In Gehraiyaan, Zain has a manipulative streak like Vikram. He does not feel any guilt for his actions. "Jab koi tumhare baare me na soch raha ho na, khud ko apne baare me sochna padta hai." He is in a relationship with the rich Tia as her father helped finance his dream project. "Ya phir wahan bhi kismat ka intezaar kar rahi ho," Zain tells Alisha to take a leap of faith to do something big instead of waiting, echoing Vikram's words to Sona. Zain might be ruthless, but I did feel he genuinely loved Alisha. However, when she started to take down all that he built, he chose to eliminate her. His ambition was larger than his love. Because for him, too, starting all over again was not possible.

Gehraiyaan also talks about the outsiders. Alisha is the emotional outsider. Alisha, Karan, and Tia grew up together as kids. Alisha moved away from the city due to family circumstances. Physical distances led to emotional distances. Karan and Tia became better friends; Alisha was isolated. Zain is the physical outsider who left behind poverty and abuse to climb up the ladder of upward mobility. He does not like it when Tia and her mother keep reinstating that he is an outsider, as if he did not deserve to be there. In the alphabet, the letters A and Z lie on the two outer ends of the alphabet. Alisha and Zain lie on the two outer ends trying to fit in. They both forge a connection as they have other things in common. They both are scarred people. She carries the emotional scars from her childhood following the death of her mother. He carries the physical scars from his childhood following the abandonment of his mother.

Gehraiyaan has many themes that were also seen in Shakun Batra's earlier films—Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu and Kapoor & Sons. There are commonalities in the characters. Rahul (Imran Khan) in Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu is scared of dogs. Rahul (Fawad Khan) in Kapoor & Sons is afraid of rats. Alisha in Gehraiyaan is a little afraid of dogs. There is Riana (Kareena Kapoor), affectionately called Ri, in Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu. There is Tia (Alia Bhatt) in Kapoor & Sons, affectionately called Ti. There is again Tia, also called Ti, in Gehraiyaan. There are characters who are writers in Kapoor & Sons and Gehraiyaan. There is an undercurrent of sibling rivalry and slight resentment in Rahul and Arjun (Sidharth Malhotra) in Kapoor & Sons and between Alisha and Tia in Gehraiyaan. Dysfunctional families play a critical role in the three films. Buried secrets come to the surface in the three films. Memories associated with the old school (Bombay) and family houses (Conoor and Alibaug) also play a small role in all three films. In Kapoor & Sons, the mother turns out to be a symbolic villain. Sunita (Ratna Pathak Shah) gave the idea of Arjun's story to Rahul, who became a bestselling author. In Gehraiyaan, Sonali (Pavleen Gujral) had an affair with her brother-in-law while Alisha blamed her father for her mother's emotional state.

Dysfunctional Families in Shakun Batra's Films

Characters are scared

And, then, there are the photographs in the three films. Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu used photographs to depict the emotional distances between the family members. Ri gifts Rahul a camera. Kapoor And Sons is also teeming with photography-related scenes. The dying wish of Dadu (Rishi Kapoor) is to have a picture clicked with his entire family. The family bonds while looking over old photographs. Arjun clicks pictures from his cellphone. He clicks Rahul's picture while smoking; later, when Rahul damages the car, he poses to get his photograph clicked. Rahul also looks at the pictures on the house wall. Tia's house is also full of her photos with her parents. Sunita finds about Rahul's secret through his photographs. Gehraiyaan also features similar photograph scenes. Alisha looks at the photographs of her childhood when she visits the house in Alibaug after years. She clicks a picture of her family but crops out her father keeping only her mother and herself in the frame. Later, she crops out Zain from a photograph as their relationship was still private.

Photographs in Shakun Batra's Films

Cropping out

In one of the beautiful shots from Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu, Rahul visits Ri. Their feet are shown suspended in the air. I still remember it after all these years. In Kapoor & Sons, there are some lovely close-up shots of hands. In Gehraiyaan, too, intimacy is depicted through the many shots of feet. In addition, there are also repeating shots of the hands of the characters. The camera focuses on the hands, primarily of Alisha, at different stages, representing her anxiety. When her mother had died, Alisha's hand was shaking. The trauma of that event stayed with her in her adulthood. She is often twitching her hands in stressful situations. At one stage, she cuts her hands with a pair of scissors, punishing herself for keeping her father distant. Alisha says that she does not have the strength to start over again in the final moment of reconciliation. Her father comforts her, saying that her strength lies in her hands.

Hands and Feet in Shakun Batra's Films

Alisha and her hands in Gehraiyaan.

There are other motifs in Shakun Batra's film. In Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu, there is the feeling of claustrophobia, represented by the ties and the balloons. "Udne ki chah to bahut thi, lekin koshish karne ke pankh bahut kam," says Rahul. In Kapoor & Sons, there is the shadow of death that looms everywhere in the film. In Gehraiyaan, there is the theme of the past. And the turmoil of the characters is represented by the turbulence of the waves.

In the film's final act, there is the sudden death. It was sort of clear from the film's trailer that there would be an incident related to the waves and the water. There is the concept of Chekhov's gun that says, "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter, it absolutely must go off." We can also say that the premise of Chekhov's ship also holds true. A narrative set on a boat will have someone who will fall or jump off it. In fact, at an earlier point in the film, Zain imagines throwing Tia off the ship. It did not come as a huge surprise to me, though the moment it happened was surprising. There was a sudden death in Kapoor & Sons as well.

The dubbing in the film seems a little off at many places. Characters speak something, but there is another frame in focus. The voice is delayed in many scenes. The editing also feels a bit off. For instance, when Alisha visits her father for the first time in Nashik, the camera angles when she argues with him also seem a little misplaced. The music did not work for me. It fits the film's milieu, but I could not connect with it. Something on the lines of Arijit Singh's music in Umesh Bist's Pagglait would have been fantastic here. But the film's background score is absolutely fabulous. I do wish the film had a little bit more humor and more color.

Gehraiyaan has been shot beautifully by Kaushal Shah. There are two kinds of patterns in the cinematography seen throughout the film. Characters are often shot from behind the glass as if the camera is peeping inside, providing an outsider's perspective. There were quite a substantial number of shots where this was visible. I checked if Kaushal Shah also shot Anubhav Sinha's Thappad because that film also had many sequences shot behind the glass walls.

Glass walls

The second type of shot is the diagonal shot of the characters. The conversations between the characters happen when they are placed diagonally to each other. For instance, it can be seen in the scene at the studio where Alisha and Zain talk to each other, or after Zain's death, Alisha and Tia sit across. Each frame seems to be well thought about. Then there are the little moments, such as the shot of the shadows of characters at different stages. In the film, there is one particular moment when Zain calls Alisha to meet at the ship to sort things out. His face is not shown, but his shadow can be seen behind the curtains. Also, whenever Aisha and Zain meet at the Taj hotel, a shot of birds can be seen. Earlier in the film, Alisha closes the curtains in her home. Later, Zain closes the blinds in his office.

Diagonal conversations

Shadows

Closing the curtains

Birds

Gehraiyaan is written by Shakun Batra, Ayesha DeVitre, Sumit Roy, and Yash Sahai. Based on the trailer, I assumed Gehraiyaan to be a story about infidelity. But there is nothing much about it. The film was primarily the story of Alisha. The best bits about the film were about her and her parents. Alisha is mature and responsible. She had to become a mother to her father. She says that she has the soul of an old grandmother. When she had an affair with Zain, I did not feel bad for Karan because he treated her like a pushover. Karan makes Tia read his book draft because she was the outsider in their relationship. He gets irritated when Alisha asks for it. Alisha had to take care of the household while he left his "soul-sucking" job in advertising to become a writer. He does not even help her with chores. At one point, he even wears the shirt that says, "I'll do it tomorrow." Having met someone like Zain provides a possibility of a future. Not only Alisha and Zain, but other characters in the film also try to hide something. Tia knows about the paternity of her Alisha, but she keeps it to herself. Alisha's father does not tell her the truth as did not have in his heart to snatch away the happy memories of her mother.

Gehraiyaan might not have the emotional strength of Kapoor & Sons, but it has this feeling of somberness that is again in line with Shakun Batra's oeuvre. It is beautiful in some places. Deepika Padukone is lovely as Alisha. She is always great at portraying these contemporary characters (Meera in Love Aaj Kal, Veronica in Cocktail, Piku in Piku, and Tara in Tamasha). She carries the film throughout. Performances by the other three are also good though there is not much scope for the character of Karan. Naseeruddin Shah feels like he is playing another distant father, like his character from Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, but it is the reverse. It was Alisha who was trying to be distant from him. In an earlier moment, he had said that Alisha's mother died a good mother while he became the bad father. It was a foreshadowing moment.

The past, luck, and choices come together beautifully in the film's final moment. Tia and Alisha want to break the loop in which they are stuck like their parents were. They decide to start afresh. Tia wonders, "But maybe if we let go of the past, it will let go of us, too?" But then an old lady from the past comes back again to remind that it is not going to be easy. Because as Faulkner said, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

Trivia:

1. Instagram is called Instgram and WhatsApp is called WatsApp.

2. The elderly lady (Mohini Kewalramani) who met Alisha at the ship in Gehraiyaan was also the neighbor of Simi (Tabu) in Sriram Raghavan's Andhadhun.

3. Books In Movies: Alisha reads Hippie by Paulo Coelho.

4. The Twitter bio of Siddhant Chaturvedi.

5. An old tweet on Naseeruddin Shah.

Other Reading:

The post on Kapoor & Sons—Link

Dialogue of the Day:

"I can't live in the past."—Zain, Gehraiyaan.

"And, I don't know how to let go of mine."—Alisha, Gehraiyaan.

All The Stuff from 2021

Last year was the second year of the pandemic. It seems to be a part of life now which will not go away for quite a while. I worked on many things, professionally at work, and outside of work. However, things did not turn out the way I had hoped. I am not sad as such (maybe a little sad) but, at least, I took action. I am putting some of the things outside of work that I did in the last year. I was talking to a colleague who told me, sometimes, it is good to give yourself credit for all the things you have done and how far you have come. Here are some of those:

Book on Dil Chahta Hai:

After being in the work for years, I finally decided to publish my book on Dil Chahta Hai. It was a learning experience for me as I got to know about many things about publishing. It was a lot of work to finish it. Looking back, I wonder if it was all worth it. I don't think many people have read it, but if you have, please let me know or consider leaving a review on the book's Goodreads page here.

Podcasts with one of India's best critics Rahul Desai:

1) On Film Writing Part 1—Link
2) On Film Writing Part 2—Link
3) On Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year—Link

Film Discussions at Learning Perspectives:
1) On some business concepts in Dil Dhadakne Do—Link

2) On leadership in Batman—Link

Jury Member for the 16th RMIM Puraskaar: 

I was given an opportunity to be a jury member for the RMIM Puraskaar recognizing the best Hindi music of the year. The awards can be viewed here along with the comments of the jury members.

Lecture: 

I took a guest lecture on character analysis for the students of the film appreciation course at the Film and Television Insitute of India (FTII). Samvartha Sahil teaches the course and he has been following my blog for many years. He asked to take a session. It was surreal for me.

Panelist for India Wants To Know Quiz:

I was a panelist for India Wants To Know Quiz. I have seen many questions taken from my trivia posts on some quizzes. But it is nice to actually sometimes get credit for them as I put a lot of effort to find them. In one of the other quizzes from 2020, they also mentioned my name, and a kind panelist Vibhendu Tiwari gave a shoutout to me for all the collages and things I put here. It can be seen here starting at 1 Hour 28 minutes.

Featured on Nutshell India Social Media Channels:

The people at Nutshell India reached out as they wanted me to talk about the song Satrangi Re from Dil Se. I spoke about the song on their Instagram account here.

Comments by Directors:

The posts on Atrangi Re and the themes of mythology in Sujoy Ghosh's films were acknowledged by the two directors.

ReadingFilms on Instagram: 

I started a film-focused account on Instagram. My blog readership is declining. I feel people have moved on to other forms of social media. So, I started this account called ReadingFilms on Instagram. I still prefer writing on my blog but I have to adapt to the ways of the world. I have tried to post something every single day on this account for the last year. Most of the stuff is from the blog. It has 5.2K followers now. Some random posts went absolutely viral reaching 500K views, while some which I put so much effort into did not get the expected reach. It is all so unpredictable. The account can be followed here.

Focusing on Health:

I joined a training program and started to take care of my health. I lost 11 Kgs. I did this because I want to feel more confident and look good. There is a line in the Gehraiyaan trailer where Alisha (Deepika Padukone) says, "I feel stuck." It hits home. I do not want to feel stuck. I am still not out of the woods but I am hoping I will have more clarity in 2022. 

I hope things will get better for all of us soon. I will continue to do my best and strive to be the best version of myself. I try to be happy and fun because que sera sera.

Dialogue of the Day:

"Le doobi ja rahi hai, gehraiyaan humein."
—Gehraiyaan