Shuddh Desi Romance

Shuddh Desi Romance is like its title. It tells it as it is : it is desi, it has romance and it is matter of fact, but never preachy.

It talks about love, sex, living-in, marriage, commitment,  adulthood, doubts, trust, honesty,  middle class values and a lot of other things that every millennial, especially if they come from small town India,  have always known  about and have fought (or caved under) most of their adult lives.

But, and this is a huge but, it does not have melodrama. I am serious. The movie has a lot of chances to take the drama route, but it does not.  The jilted lover does not break into a sad song, abortion does not turn the bright-eyed loveable girl into a hardened, cynical  vamp and inner insecurities and frustrations do not come accompanied with doleful background music.

By now, I’m sure all Hindi movie goers know that the film does not toe the “ek chutki sindoor ki kimat” line. But what is notable is that  it does not hedge its message and it does not use sex as a means to draw in the crowds. At least, not from what I saw of the trailers.

Maneesh Sharma knows the dilliwala very well, as we’ve seen in Band Baaja Baraat, and uses this knowledge with flair. Take it farther away from Dilli and he’s still in his comfort zone. It is evident in how Rishi Kapoor breaks his daal bati and loads it up with ghee, how the wastrel sings for the pretty girl in the bus, how Rajput snaps at the conductor and then, on having a stroke of good luck, apologizes, in how they all dress.

Sharma’s not trying to make a “pretty” movie, though the man knows you have to make some compromises to get the money, which he does. But the compromises are mostly some well written songs tuned to folksy music, so one does not mind.  Parineeti Chopra is a natural, Sushant Singh Rajput is endearing and the most charming guide we’ve seen on screen since Raju, and Vaani Kapoor, graceful.

So in this movie, the girl and boy live together. Because they live together, they wash clothes and cook food and fight and kiss and make love like any other normal couple. They also sing and dance once in a while, but that is while doing those chores, so it is like when you put on your music player and dance while making omelettes or vacuuming (or sweeping, depending on where you are).

The studio they live in does not look like it’s been borrowed from a much richer cousin, the girl keeps her clothes in a steel almirah, wears cotton kurtas, uses buckets to wash and clean and uses a ceramic cup for an ashtray.
Even the flat Konkona Sen lived in in Wake up, Sid! was too nicely done for a struggling writer in Bombay.
When the man stays over for the first time in Sharma's movie, he uses rolled up ad hoc sheets for a pillow (and graduates to a real pillow in later scenes when he has officially moved). When he takes a bus , it looks like an Agra bus.
But that does not mean the movie is a depressing work of cameraman ship. Oh no. It brings out the beauty of Jaipur well, and even uses the pink in the pink city for a song that talks of love. Shaam gulabi, shehar gulabi, pehar gulabi hain.  Get it?
There’s the man caught in between doing right and wrong: in this case, struggling to come to terms with the fact that he will have to hurt the same girl twice, because, well, he’s in love with someone else.  Rajput is the quintessential lost boy-man who takes a long time to understand what he really wants in life and how to go about it. To top it off, he meets the right girl at the wrong moment—while he’s going to get married.

Chopra is the practical woman who has seen some of life, and the running scares her a bit. Which man runs  from his own wedding? In a  moment of self evaluation, she encapsulates the crux of the movie somewhat: "mere lehenga chunni pehenney sey kya ho jaega, usko bhaagna hoga toh bhagega hi." But because she's also upright, she's willing to see the good in the bhaagna. She accepts that that  also shows honesty-- this is a man who will not go through the charade when his head and presumably heart, are somewhere else. So, they give it a shot.

There is some more running and chasing, in which the director loses his grip and the movie moves a tad too slowly, but the acting compensates for it.  In an outright rejection of age old morals that say once you’ve told the world you’re going to get married , there is no way out even if all your head and heart is screaming "wrong", our hero finally gets together with the girl he loves.
And here, Sharma goes very bold. And YashRaj too, given that they are the original makers of the shaadi and chiffon romances.
Anyway, so instead of making the couple fall in love so that they change who they are and decide to lovingly marry, he sticks to his guns and makes them continue to live in.

Vaani Kapoor could have been the horribly wronged, lamenting third wheel (and she was wronged) but writer Jaideep Sahni makes her hold her own. She knows when to let go, and does it without any loss of self respect. And without any self pitying: when she says you may not be able to tell when you fall in love but you always know when you fall out, the audience knows she’s moved on. Or will, soon.
There’s no animosity between the two women, but neither do they become friends and live happily ever after.
There’s no outright rejection of marriage. Chopra, in her down to earth way says she’s not comfortable with marrying, not as of now.  There is, however, an outright rejection of the hypocrisy in marriages and weddings.

If you’re in one that has none of those, you’re golden, of course.

But in Sharma’s world of hired baraatis (and in much of what I see around me), people are either hiding, or lying, or convincing themselves they are doing it for some greater good, or trying to change each other, or letting the titillating mms-downloading-conservative purohits get away with it,  or being fools in some way, of which our spunky couple will have none.

Neither will I, but that’s besides the point.