Not a Kaahani Review

If you have watched the movie you cannot talk about the twist and ruin it for others. You can only post generic comments about the actor Vidya Balan and wax eloquent about the city - Kolkata. I read all the fb posts of my friends and their friends and grew frustrated not having seen it. I wish everyone who had watched it before did not take the 'spoiler alert' too seriously and told me the twist at the end, the waiting for the twist is always interesting but is also nerve wrecking. I am also glad no one told me, because I had my own theory forming when the last 15 mins ripped its thread and shocked me. It was not a twist for twist's sake like an Abbas Mastaan thriller, it was a well formulated twist, which once revealed took you back to the really subtle hints left through out the 100 mins preceding it.


But I am also not shying away from admitting that the build up to this movie left me slightly disappointed. Team Kaahani is not to blame, it is the nature of human expectations.


Team Kaahani, with director Sujoy Ghose is full of Bengalis, set in Kolkata there are only a handful of characters which are played by other actors. So it's a huge boost of , umm can I hazard saying, Ego? Each of the actors who I see in crazy slap stick comedies or adaptation of Ray classic or in the daily soap playing on some Bengali channel shook my pseudo intellectual upturned nose and eye roll, they were good, they were not actors, they were characters, they were the manager of the guest house, they were the officer at the police station, they were the amayik bangali bhadralok who always began with "namoshkar" and ended with a gesture to God.

I have already said too much.


There will be pages written about Vidya who out does herself in each role she picks up, she looks the same, she does not need to change the way she looks drastically all she simply adds is may be a cloak or a loosely done hair, she does not have the limited expressions that is bane of most other's in her generation of actors, but somehow, she is now a star, and never in the 110 odd mins do I forget that. None of us can really look at her and think of Vidya Bagchi, we look and see Vidya Balan. I feel over sensitized to her arched eyebrows, glimpsing a little of The Dirty Picture.


I sat down to not review the movie. So, here is what I actually wanted to talk about.

Satyaki 'Rana' SInha, mind blowing performance as the guy next door [ which is an achievement in itself, movie after movie to be that guy next door] fresh recruit to the Kolkata Police, wanting to do the right thing, afraid for his own job, hard working, trying to be honest, caught in the middle of the kaahani of Vidya Bagchi & Kolkata. He had third most screen time in this movie after Vidya and Kolkata. So, there he stands fiddling with the PC which he can't use too well, he stares at the woman in front of the Police station, he looks away when shouted at, he tries but fails to stand up to a superior in rank, feels amorous towards this woman who doesn't seem to notice him, thinks about her on his journey home and makes an exception of receiving a call from home. He mumbles everytime he does something unlike himself, he runs, pants, falls, throws clumsy punches, falls down, throws garbage at the attacker, he is not the hero, he is not the clever intelligent guy, he is not the hot guy, he is definitely not the cool casual guy. He is Rana and somewhere in the Kaahani you wonder was there a sub plot that could have unfolded. But that is conjecture of the romantic heart.

Parambrata Chattopadhyay, plays his character with restraint and remains "the charioteer of Arjun" like his name suggests.


What got me over the initial disappointment I felt after the great hype of the movie, is Rana because well, I have had the biggest crush on him for like ever....!!


On a serious note, my city never looked so beautiful, the camera captured everything, the grey pavement, the lighted Howrah bridge, the dark water of the Hooghly, the old buildings crumbling, the tea stall.... a city can be romanced, and this is how one should romance a city.


I think thrillers cannot be watched more than once, but Kaahani can be watched a few times over, because now that you are no longer holding your breathe to get to the end to find out the truth, you can relax and observe Rana's eyes move over the face of Vidya, or notice how he slips to "Vidya" from "Mrs. Bagchi", when he wants to do the right thing, and makes it clear that he is in this Kaahani by choice, the choice to be with her, close to her.


May be I am blinded by my crush, but once you have been awestruck by Vidya Balan and Kolkata, please do think about Rana, Bob Biswas, Mr. Das, Paltu and Rana again. They make this movie what it is. A Kaahani worth the watch many times over.

The Post Coital Smoke Analysis

So may be you are a non smoker and don't really wana read this but hang in there.

May be you are not one of those cuddle hungry folks and would rather be allowed to reach to the bedside table pick up that pack off smoke and the light. Inhale and possibly bliss of a different kind. And your no smoker partner frowns and you hesitate and donot wish to offend or create the wrong impression so, you wish for the pack of smoke hidden in your handbag.

May be you like to cuddle and may be you and your partner both like a smoke then you get to share a smoke and watch the languid smoke swirl upto the ceiling. The bonding is of a different kind. You feel it slowly opening your overwhelmed senses to the here and the now. You smile and know that even though in a few minutes it will be time to get up and leave, for this 7 odd mins you can stop worrying and let your mind wander.

May be all our movie screenings need a voice over statutory warning about smoking. May be post coital smoke is a ritual that needs to be performed to complete the journey of the senses.