A daddy’s gift of love

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Pankaj Kapur’s directorial debut Mausam is a three-hour-long saga of love in the time of war and hate that travels across cities, villages, countries and continents accompanying lovers who seem destined never to meet.

Mausam’s story is plotted on a world map, with communal riots and terror attacks serving as its pit stops. The lovers here don’t struggle or fight to reunite. Theirs is the sort of love that twists and recoils every time there is violence.
This passive love is charming, not stirring. That’s partly the fault of, or rather lack of, Sonam Kapoor’s acting skills, but also the length of the film and the predictable and incredibly contrived journey that wears you out. You return tired, in need of a snooze. The aftertaste is not so much joy as relief.
What stays with you is the film’s impressive grand scale, its heart-felt pacifist message, Shahid Kapoor, and bafflement as to why Pankaj Kapur couldn’t figure when to stop.

MAUSAM’S HEART beats in Mallukot, Punjab, and that’s where we begin, in 1992. This is a world of sugarcane fields and angeethis, tractors and hand-knitted sweaters, bhangra and memories of Punjab terrorism. Lovely scenes, quick dialogue and silly Punjab da humour establish memorable and endearing characters like the grouchy Tai, Gulzari Chacha (Manoj Pahwa), the forgetful Daarji, duffer but to-die-for friends and general bonhomie in this one-tonga village.
Harrinder aka Harry (Shahid Kapoor) lives here with his professor dad and sister Pammo whose wedding is being planned.
Harry is a regular sort of village boy. A neighbourhood girl, Rajjo (Aditi Sharma), adores him, but he is more interested in the ladoos she brings than her. Harry is eagerly waiting for a letter from the defence academy and often cycles to the railway station to check. But these trips, thrilling as they are, are meant to establish that Harry likes to race – he races against the train, mostly on his bicycle, sometimes in an uncle’s blue convertible – and that he will soon be racing the enemy in a fighter plane.
Into Harry’s world one morning arrives Aayat (Sonam Kapoor), to live with her Fatima bua (Supriya Pathak). She had to escape from Kashmir because her father refused to tell the terrorists where his best friend Maharaj Kishan (Anupam Kher) was. Tick-mark Kashmiri pundits.
Harry sees Aayat and buckles. He stares at her through binoculars, feigns fainting spells, and late one night, when Aayat is busy putting mehndi on his sleeping sister’s hands, he conducts their first date, through hand-written notes. It’s a magical, lyrical scene.
Pammo’s doli leaves and that December night it rains. While Harry and Aayat are on the rooftop, wet and staring at each other, the rest of the village is gathered around TV sets, staring at kar sevaks atop the Babri Masjid.
Fatima bua and Aayat leave for Mumbai early morning, and Harry receives the letter he has been waiting for.
Cut to seven years later, in Scotland, where buggies are laden with nodding flowers, streets are pebbled and stone houses have lacy curtains. Aayat is now in western attire, with a rose always peeping out of her loosely curled locks.
Aayat lives here with bua, father and Maharaj Kishan and they run a small Kashmiri souvenir shop. There is something heartrending about Kashmiris in exile selling bits and baubles from a world that was once theirs. Their alienation and loneliness is debilitating, and that comes through here.
Anyway, into Aayat’s world arrives Squadron Leader Harry, with clipped gestures and a mean moustache. We get to know from his uniform and jargon that he flies stuff; she is at the Royal Academy of Dance. He’s the dashing cavalier and she the delicate ballet dancer, only that he is, and she is not.
Aayat and Harry meet, kiss, he proposes, but before anything can happen there’s trouble in Kargil. It’s 1999, remember.
We go to Jodhpur where he poses in and around fighter planes pretending to be a fighter pilot. We also fly for a bit with him, to blast the daylights out of Pakistanis on Tiger Hill, but land straight in a hospital.
All this while Aayat had been desperately trying to reach Harry, and so has he, but they miss each other. We are then dragged to Switzerland, Mallukot, and after many detours and songs it’s 2002 and we are in Ahmedabad.
Pankaj Kapoor delivers his final message of healing and reconciliation in Narendra Modi’s Gujarat, in a burning amusement park, with a wailing orphaned child in tow.

THE LOVE in Pankaj Kapur’s love story is not a screaming, wailing love. This love is the quiet sort that sighs a lot. Appropriately, therefore, Mausam ambles, gently, somberly, creating fussy situations and lavish sets so that Aayat and Harry can keep trying to meet and keep missing each other. Initially it seems it’s damn fate or plain bad luck, but the regularity with which this happens makes you wonder if they are immensely stupid or just not keen on meeting.
Terror and riots don’t really enter the story, though the film has characters who are bruised and aching because of them. Pankaj Kapur assigns these and other supporting roles to a very competent ensemble of actors, notably Supriya Pathak, Aditi Sharma and Manoj Pahwa.
The worlds he creates, especially in Punjab, is with a lot of attention to details. The camera work is super, as is the art direction, though beauteous Scotland seemed very artificial.
Where ever he takes us, he carries along three things: trains, tongas and large asbestos-cement pipes. These are Mausam’s leitmotifs and I found them sweet.
Sonam’s look of casual and ethereal beauty is very carefully crafted. She is an aesthetic, gorgeous prop where ever she is. Though she’s around a lot, she has not been given much to do, and that’s good. Sonam smiles, she looks coy and sometimes she sheds tears.
The onus of carrying the flame of love is on Shahid.
Mausam is a father’s gift of love to his son, and Shahid does justice to his dad’s faith in him. Except for his perfect but lacking in grace dance, I enjoyed watching him.