Gehraiyaan has been watched and I’m not going to brag about what the makers could have done better or about the divided reviews the movie is getting. Though I agree that the duration of the movie could have been reduced by the 15-20 minutes. There are loopholes in the story and the editing but despite all this the movie does speaks a lot more than the things Showed at the surface level.

The slow start of the movie was just like the waves hitting back and forth the sea shore. People can’t be fully black or white and so are the ‘people’ of Shakun Batra’s gehraiyaan. Zain, Alisha, Tia, Karan, Vinod do exist. People do take decisions according to the situation rather thinking about what lies ahead for them.

Sexual intimacy is a part of the movie but it talks about a lot of things on the deeper level. Sexual touch is said to have a make-or-break effect on a person and relationships. And when we talk about Alisha, it healed her. She was in a better mental state. Alisha was so much haunted by her childhood trauma that all she wanted was to not end up being stuck like her mother. Maybe she did find an anchor to her yatch in the form of Zain. On the other hand, Zain’s childhood experience made him a defensive human being. Who always believed in eliminating the threats which came into his way. Along with this Karan’s struggle of completing his book, getting it published, leaving his job as a copywriter is something which we (writers) can relate to.

The movie had so many sub-plots that it is the first time I’m more willing to talk about the sub-plots rather the main premise of the movie. A yoga instructor trying to cope up with anxiety as a sub-plot is what grabbed my attention. The extent of inner turmoil is so subtly and yet clearly depicted by the makers. Now done if we talk about Karan and Tia, their presence didn’t affected me much. They were taking in whatever came to them and living their life. To be honest I did took a lot more time to connect to Zain and Alisha then I normally do, maybe because their personalities are so layered and grey!!

The four characters are so real that karma also plays a fiddle in their stories. They do get a treatment similar to what they did with others. Shakun has showed the whole story from Alisha’s perspective and as we head towards the end, we see it as a story of her redemption but for me it’s the story of her father’s redemption because, at the end he is the only one who is able to get relieved from the burden of his past. He gets what he has been longing for, the love of his daughter.

I also want to talk about the cinematography and visual language of the movie but then it’s going to be a lengthy write up. Will cover this in next article.

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