Review: In ‘Main Vaapas Aaunga’, to love is to remember and to remember is to love

Imtiaz Ali’s latest wistful romance reunites him with his Amar Singh Chamkila lead actor Diljit Dosanjh, music composer AR Rahman and lyricist Irshad Kamil. In Main Vaapas Aaunga, to love is to remember and to remember is to love.

Bradford resident Nirvair (Dosanjh) is lost between a job he doesn’t care for, a stand-up comedy side hustle he isn’t good at and a girlfriend (Banita Sandhu) whom he is unsure about. Back home in India, Nirvair’s nonagenarian grandfather is lost too, in the thickets of dementia.

Isher (Naseeruddin Shah) barely makes sense any more to his sons Iqbal (Rajat Kapoor) and Angad (Jaipreet Singh) and daughter-in-law Meher (Anjana Sukhani). Nirvair returns to decipher Isher’s ramblings, which lead back to Isher’s life in Sargodha in pre-Partition Punjab.

The ardour between the younger Isher (Vedang Raina) and Afsana (Sharvari) is already doomed. Partition is round the corner. Communal poison is spreading. Sikhs and Hindus are preparing to flee to India. There is dark talk of “outsiders” coming into Sargodha to foment trouble.

Isher, who’s more optimistic than a worried Afsana, pays no heed. When threatened by a group of Muslims led by Afzal (Danish Pandor), Isher plonks down on the ground and says, I am going nowhere.

Decades after that incident, Isher yearns for the lover, the fields, the houses and monuments to which he had once vowed fidelity. There’s more to Isher’s beseeching, as Nirvair discovers.

While trying to follow the twisted thread of Isher’s thoughts, Nirvair is introduced not only to his family’s past, but Partition itself. Strangely clueless about Partition, Nirvair meets with amateur historians, and learns enough to weave the tragedy into a stand-up comedy set.

For quite a while, Main Vaapas Aaunga careens between giddy romance, dumbed-down Partition lessons and the older Isher’s battle against erasure. The 166-minute film, co-written by Ali and Nayanika Mahtani, is big on flashbacks, long-winded scenes and abrupt jumps. There are disposable sub-plots: the dynamic between Nirvair and Kaveri, some fertiliser thingie Nirvair is trying to invent.

The fractured screenplay, possibly meant to mirror Isher’s mental state, sometimes undercuts the sheer audacity of Main Vaapas Aaunga’s theme: an inter-faith love that knows no borders and inspires closure and understanding, rather than vendetta and enmity, when the story reaches Pakistan.

After thrashing about, all along delivering powerful individual scenes, Main Vaapas Aaunga clicks into place. In the resonant climax, as well as in the gorgeous Imagine-like song in the end credits, Imtiaz Ali cuts to the chase about the endurance of love, the secrets of Partition, and the power of remembering.

The film boldly confronts the severe psychological repression that followed Partition. However, Main Vaapas Aaunga sticks to the conventional portrayal as Muslims as the aggressors in communal riots. While the film shows Sikhs killing Muslims, it’s the Muslims who violate the Sikh women – a disturbing scene featuring a ferocious Dolly Ahluwalia.

The story’s radical edge is waiting to be unsheathed. In Kya Kamaal Hai, sung by Diljit Dosanjh and placed in the middle of the end credits, Ali dazzlingly links Partition not only to present-day conflicts around the world but also to the tendency of Indians to ignore uncomfortable realities and insist that everything is wonderful.

Irshad Kamil, who often puts into lyrics what Imtiaz Ali doesn’t always say in dialogue, is in peak form in Kya Kamaal Hai. (The song doubles up as a tribute to Gulzar’s cheeky Haal Chaal Theek Thaak Hai from Mere Apne.) Coming after a sharp line by Nirvair against hate-mongering, the song pushes Main Vaapas Aaunga from its specific setting towards a comment on contemporary India.

There are admirable turns from Rajat Kapoor, Jaipreet Singh and Manish Chaudhuri as the Grewals’ Muslim friend in Sargodha. The lead performers each contribute something different to the film’s emotional tissue.

Diljit Dosanjh pours into Nirvair both a proven talent for mining humanity and political consciousness. As the ailing Isher, Naseeruddin Shah is in a class by himself.

Shah nails the grammar of the dementia patient – the inchoate speech, the trembling hands, the gaze fixed on images that are visible only to him. The outstanding, heart-rending performance is delivered almost entirely from a bed.

Lying on his back at nearly all times, Shah communicates the unsayable and the unthinkable through garbled speech and wild eye movements. The film’s plangent tone is transmitted most clearly through a man whose brain is melting but whose heart hasn’t forgotten.

Vedang Raina ably captures the young Isher’s dreaminess. Sharvari, in the first real performance of her career, is lovely as the poetic but also level-headed Afsana. Sharvari has the final shot to herself – a superb moment of both farewell and belonging.