Author Archives: sitanshi talati-parikh

will we ever be ‘cool’ enough?

08 Monday Mar 2010

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Watching the Filmfare awards and the Oscars back-to-back just reinforces the fact that we will really never be ‘cool’ enough. I mean sure, we can wear the well-cut tuxes and the flowy gowns, but it is the on-stage humour that really sux. If they are not ridiculing other people, they are trashing each other – literally, with eggs and such. I have no issues with pulling a leg here and there, but must it be done in a crass manner? I guess for the people who want subtlety and wit and sarcasm of a higher level, we would need to turn to the Oscars. After all, the TRPs are derived from the masses, and I guess the masses get crass humour, as we can tell from the overwhelming amount of terrible comedy that emerges from Hindi cinema. Our awards are so predictible, the humour so boring and the performers so obvious and unenthralling that one wonders why we even bother to watch Hindi cinema award shows. Of course, the industry was made happy, by splitting the awards between all the ‘camps’, making sure most went home with something. Possibly the only innovative act and the highlight of the event was Shahid Kapoor’s tribute to Michael Jackson, which actually involved skill, talent and thought. And the fillers? Bring back Ranbir Kapoor and Imran Khan, I say; out with the stale acts. SRK and SAK were good the first time around, now it’s just a bad deja vu. Actually, why should I waste my time on this blog post. I have one word for our awards shows: *Yawn*.

Karthik calling Krishna

05 Friday Mar 2010

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I don’t know if I am old-fashioned about mystery, or a Sherlock-cum-Agatha stalwart, but I prefer clues to be unobtrusive and to keep me guessing. I would rather not know or not expect it to be the person it is, bec of the way the story is told, unfolds and the way the characters are portrayed. Two films that had the potential to be brilliantly mysterious, let me down in that sole respect because we could guess all along that something was rather off with that person: Ishqiya and Karthik Calling Karthik. While each had a trump-card surprise element: a not-so-dead husband; and a phone with unexpected features (which we couldn’t guess through the course of the film, despite the pointers) the two lead characters, Krishna and Karthik respectively, both hinted at something being unnatural about themselves. Karthik was already visiting a shrink and his state of life would logically be bringing his mind to despair; Krishna’s expressions and body language all along suggested that there was something up with her – that she was not all that she seemed to be. So then, if the who was nearly identified, the how and what remained to be discovered. While the latter was executed well, taking the ‘who’ away takes away more than half the fun of a mystery. Understanding what makes people tick is the most interesting quality of a true mystery writer. And giving away the culprit or making the culprit obvious leaves the movie less nuanced and subtle than it should ideally be! Writers Abhishek Chaubey and Vijay Lalwani, in a commendable first effort, have both made the same error in characterization and script-writing. I only hope they keep us guessing a lot more in the future! Sent on my BlackBerry® from Vodafone Essar

Cinema in Transition – Dinosaurs in the Park

27 Saturday Feb 2010

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I told myself that another review would be pointless, especially after I’d seen the movie so late. After all, I’m not surprised that I am disappointed with the film. Inauthenticity (especially to the syndrome), over-the-top performances, over-dramatization, continuity errors and inconsistency are all a part of this so-called “Bollywood cinema” that we make exceptions for. We make those exceptions because they entertain us, because they star the larger-than-life actors and because they work so marvelously with cinematography, locations and dream-scapes, that we succumb to them. All along understanding that nothing can be 100%, nothing can be perfect. Nothing that is real will translate well on screen and will make us feel good about ourselves, or send us back truly entertained. That’s because ‘realistic’ cinema at a point of time was grimy, gritty and dark. Barjatya, Johar and others of their ilk brought a slice-of-life drama from an ordinary life and made it extraordinary with heightened emotions and colourful scapes. And there was a time when this really worked. I’ve seen Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, Dilwale Dulhaniya…, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai etc an umpteen number of times. Barjatya slowly realised that his kind of cinema had become a dinosaur – it was too sweet to digest, and in its inherent unreality (there may be very few families actually like the ones he portrayed), in his inherent moralising and ethical trip, he was alienating an audience that once loved him. That’s because too much of a good thing can be bad, especially if your pulse remains on what you want to say, and not on what your audience wants to hear. Karan Johar brought a younger sensibility to Barjatya’s cinema – a youthful exuberance, the pain of love all candy-flossed into “happy times”. And he succeeded – his movies evolving with his own evolving thoughts and sensibilities, and his courage to be bolder with his themes on screen. But while his themes are generally relevant to the time and often have an important message to deliver, his films are still packaged in unreality.

 

But Johar remained true to what he wanted to say – that one man can be larger than life. And that man, for most part was Shah Rukh Khan. What  makes it difficult, is that Shah Rukh, himself, is larger-than-life as a person and an actor. When he begins to play a character that demands that, he cannot – shouldn’t – act it out – he’s being himself, with some character trait variations. And if he tries to act in these situations, which he often does, he tends to go over-the-top. Both Johar and Khan then fall prey to insulting the intelligence of the audience who have now been trained to understand and accept subtle nuances and acting. Can you identify with Khan? Or do you watch him because after all these years, Shah Rukh remains emminently watchable? Does the character come alive, or does one recall Shah Rukh as Rizwan Khan? The correct role for Shah Rukh is that of underplayed emotions – that in Swades and Chak De: the kind that make you wonder what he’s thinking, that make you stretch your mind to understand him; not one that is blatant and obvious. Om Shanti Om was a travesty (albeit a successful one), and unfortunately Shah Rukh associates himself with the kind of cinema that leaves his potential unexplored.

 

Farhan Akhtar changed everything. I would blame him for the fall of unreality and the rise of realistic candyfloss. The moment Dil Chahta Hai hit the screens – a film still considered seminal in many ways – he changed the notion of what people expected from Hindi cinema. He gave them real life, real dialogues, real people, real emotions, real insecurities, actual incidents picked up from real life and then blended with just enough glamour and colour to become believable and likeable all at the same time. He still admits using everyday dialogues, often arguing with lyricist-father Javed Akhtar over using everyday language in his works. Akhtar just realised that it is important to connect with the film, and the youth that he represented would expect this, having been exposed to international (not just hollywood) cinema that creates easily-identifiable characters. Maybe that’s why he wanted to recreate Don for today, and maybe that’s why that is one of his most melodramatic films to date. In much the same manner, Imtiaz Ali brought a freshness to the characters and dialogues, because he picked them up from real life. Jab We Met was not larger-than-life – it was life-sized. Zoya Akhtar exorcised a ghost with her first film – the desire to spoof this very sort of over-the-top Bollywood and its myriad idiosyncrasies. Dibakar Banerjee, Vishal Bharadwaj, Anurag Kashyap, Abhishek Kapoor, Shimit Amin, Ayan Mukherjee… are all the new breed: they pick up real life and make it real on screen, even if with their own brand of cinematic overtures. Maybe, that’s why an older audience still remains faithful to ‘Bollywood’ cinema, and in the younger audience lies the huge fan-following of this new breed of cinema-makers.

 

After all, if you want to make epics, you do it with epic characters like the way Ashutosh Gowarikar would, or in some ways Sanjay Bhansali would; not making real people epic-sized. Even when Bhansali tried to make real people larger-than-life, it didn’t work. The audience must be given some credit – they don’t need things hammered into their head, they do generally, get it; and they don’t identify with emotions worn on the sleeve at all times. While Johar’s themes work, messages are important and cinema continues to have an audience; if he chooses to have critical acclaim rather than the loyal-popular vote and choose not to go the way of Barjatya, he must reinvent his own cinema, tone down his own emotions and learn the art of underplaying with subtlety, rather than overplaying with blatancy.

To Read or To Buy?

25 Thursday Feb 2010

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Today, I took a turn about the Strand Book Fair at Bajaj Hall, Nariman Point. There was a time, back during my college days, when I would count the days until the book fair and saved up pocket money for my No. 1 indulgence. There were some amazing deals back in the day – books piled upon books, some obscure titles, all at throw-away prices. It was fun rummaging through them and collecting a whole bunch of treasures. Today (and it has been the case recently) seeing that pitiful selection of books lined up on tables spine up, face down, sorted according to a rather unintelligible system, it made me feel sad. I felt a compulsion to buy – just coz I was there, I even picked a couple of titles up, but then put them down again. Ironically, I can indulge myself now, but the temptation is much lower. Either I have lost the maniacal desire to own that a literature student always has, or the fair was just plain boring. I’d rather go with the latter – a sign that kindles are winning over books. A shoe sale will have hordes of women pushing and shoving in an unlady-like fashion to get to that perfect stiletto. Even the plant and bonsai garden sale on Marine Drive garners more attention than the once-popular Strand Book Fair.
And it’s not just that the prices are not really tempting – it’s a bit of a sham. The discounts on the books are what is regularly offered by them in their store and by others for regular buyers. The ones with the mega deals are hardly visible. The hall looks dull and lifeless, like the line of titles not even bothering to vie for attention. Books have NEVER made me feel so dismal as the book fair has today.

 

We were recently was discussing how Danai in Bandra has a certain old
book store charm and character and how big chain stores lack that
feeling. I go to Crossowrds to grab a coffee and maybe a book. I would
go to Danai to find the book that I can’t elsewhere. Also, it is
amazing how those who run a book store have no idea where their books
are. Oxford, case in point, at Churchgate. Their staff is clueless
about the books. A big book store is just that – a shop with books. A
book shop should have real charm and character, where you can chat
with the staff knowledgebly, the owner will participate because
reading and knowledge shouldn’t be commercialised. I guess that’s what
the movie You’ve Got Mail was about. It’s happening here now, and
there’s nothing we can do to stop the art of reading becoming the
front of the salesman.

one breeds familiarity, two breeds contempt

22 Monday Feb 2010

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when you meet someone for the first time, your instincts are very strong – the radar is on high and if you are an intuitive person, the signals you pick up (also depending on how straight-forward or how duplicit the person you are meeting is) are often dead-on. You tend to pay greater attention to the body language and signals that emanate from strangers. When you meet a person for the second or third time, both your and their guards are down. Neither is paying that much attention to the signals, rather you tend to concentrate on the conversation and taking ideas forward – similarities and differences. In that relaxed state of mind, you miss much that should be noted, because you no longer think it is necessary to pay attention. the comfort level acts like a red herring. eventually, your senses are getting deader with repeated meetings, since the relevance of subtle hints is not longer important. You are getting distracted by the free flow of words and conversation. And for intuitive understanding of the other person’s personality, words are just noise. Ironically, one must consider judging a book by it’s first reading and a person by your first impression.

Secret fears and mental parasites

22 Monday Feb 2010

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In life what holds us back is fear. It’s not always a I’m-scared-of-ghosts-and-stalkers kind of fear, but fear of learned anxieties. My recent fear has been the fear of wanting something I shouldn’t have – for the sheer, violent reaction I get around it. Acquired through an intolerance to a commonly consumed food item. All along I’ve told myself that there is light at the end of the tunnel – one day, I will overcome the problem (coz everything that comes must eventually go) and to do that, I will overcome my fear of discovering whether the problem continues to exist or not. As I watch others enjoying what is a normal right for them, I train my mind to accept that their reality is no longer mine. What exists for them, has ceased to exist (temporarily) for me. And now, when the time comes for me to try it again, to see whether I am still allergic to it, I am afraid. The memories of the reaction still strong in my mind, the sheer pain of experience still vivid, I can’t bring myself to try the very thing that I yearned towards. A phobia – acquired through a Pavlovian learning, if you must. I feel like a child again. I now start with baby steps. Trying one morsel to see where it will lead. The first bite that should have been deeply satisfying, exciting, even liberating, is a morbidly fearful one. Fear is a mental parasite.

Travel blog: Paradise Found (Maldives)

22 Monday Feb 2010

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Published: Verve Magazine, February 2010

A weekend celebration can start out incredibly wrong and become magically perfect, finds Sitanshi Talati-Parikh, at a recent jaunt where she revels in the pristine beauty and gastronomic delights of the two Taj Maldivian properties

 

Maldives03

Turning a decade older in one year, nay overnight, is never easy on the heart. As others in my new age bracket mourned in solitude, I figured that it would be perfect to throw a rather irreverent bash and, right after, take off in fabulous style to a destination of no dispute and great repute. Finding this place was easy – the image, torn from a lifestyle magazine, was tacked up in my husband, Sahil’s, den. As he worked, he rested his eyes by looking up at the beckoning azure waters, reflecting the sunlight in a way that only a location so close to the equator could – a place where an elixir of youth could be snatched for just a little while.

 

When we got there, that is. Did I mention that our flight to paradise got embroiled in the sudden cyclone that hit the coast? That twisting and turning (and it just wasn’t my stomach) we got to Colombo airport, only to realise that our connecting flight to Male had already left – without us. Day one of azure waters down. Hello, rotating fan, airport odours and Sri Lankan beetroot curry.

 

When we arrived at Male International Airport (15 hours later), we found the Taj staff and speedboat awaiting us, with smiles and refreshments. We took off, cutting through the inky waves, with a sense of sheer relief. And then we felt it. The humungous wave that nearly knocked us off the cushioned seats and made my stomach lurch in the way that no horror movie or sexy man ever had. And another. And another even bigger one. Apparently, the cyclonic weather had turned the still-as-a-lake-waters of the Maldives into a raging dark monster that threatened to eat us alive.

 

This really wasn’t how it was supposed to be, I told myself. Sahil reassuringly clutched my hand, and the general manager of the Vivanta Coral Reef, Allwyn Drego, who received us, also emphasised the fact that things were normally very different. Escorted to our room, I was touched to see the remnants of balloons and streamers lining the door. A reminder of what the day was to have been – a celebration.

 

Weary, but making the effort to change for dinner, we found ourselves placed by the rouge waters, on the beach, touched by a wispy breeze that floated with the promise of better things to come. Executive chef Vikas Milhoutra aroused our senses with a perfectly proportioned four-course candle-lit tasting menu. Think green pea mash with soya and aged balsamic foam, rice-paper wraps of enokitaki, brioche crouton with tossed mushroom and goat cheese salad, grilled Maldivian snapper, polenta with ratatouille of vegetables and feta with beetroot foam, and a crème brulee taster. Sigh. I felt like the best part of my life had just begun.

 

I believe we brought the sunshine with us. The next day awoke spectacularly. Time began to pass us by in the haze of snorkelling and finding a magical world of stunning multi-hued coral gardens that the island was a part of, scuba-diving lessons, sea-plane island hopping, deep-sea fishing, sun bathing to dry off, and copious amounts of delectable food – excellent sushi, Australian wagyu beef and Tasmanian lobsters cooked to a tantalising finish by the devilish Teppan chef Allwin. Stargazing (it’s unbelievable how many celestial bodies are in sharp focus from this point of the world) over post-dinner liqueurs and single malts, Drego and his charming wife explained how these blissful island-hotels in the Maldives had to be self-sufficient entities. The Taj Maldivian properties import the freshest ingredients from varied international locations, while also maintaining their own waste-management and bottling plants on-location. It’s not surprising how quickly the island had begun to feel like home – like everything one needed, existed in this one microcosmic place.

 

As we made our way on beautiful, still waters, coasting along with the setting sun, to the other Taj property – Taj Exotica Resort & Spa – I wondered how the two properties would differ. While the Vivanta Coral Reef’s genial vivacity, with its music-filled environs and bright décor, is a perfect uplifting getaway, the Exotica is a lovely, long slim piece of pristine floating land that in the midst of overhanging trees and outstretched shrubs, fiercely protects privacy and your need for seclusion. Everything was about discovering each other: even in-room dining was a truly cherishing experience. As we sat in plush robes, in our sprawling lagoon villa, we were truly pampered by the head butler, Himanshu, who laid a table with the finest linen and cutlery, chocolate sculptures and flutes topped with heady bubbly, and enveloped us with mood lighting, piped music, fresh floral scent…always anticipating our every need.

 

A champagne breakfast set up on a small sand bank was located far enough from civilisation that everything else became irrelevant. We were spoilt for choice (think a dozen different kind of egg preparations) and it was the perfect way to begin a day that you wished would never end. If love makes you hungry, the options here are unlimited. Under the supervision of F&B director, Bjoern Hiller, our taste buds were tantalised: from the chi-chi progressive world cuisine restaurant The Deep End (must-have the lobster ravioli) where the genial sommelier Luigi paired the perfect wine to match mood and food, to the interactive menu prepared by renowned chef Sandeep Narang, where our palate was intricately challenged with as many courses as we could take, picking from nearly 20 cuisines. And if while exploring the island, we were to discover a perfect spot for an intimate dinner, we would find it transformed with blazing lanterns and sunken candles to light the way – our own exclusive dining experience. Conversation became irrelevant; the experience leaves me breathless at the mere reminder of it.

 

There remains something intrinsically Taj about these two island retreats – the open, friendly charm of the staff in perfect combination with the privacy and space afforded by them, the attention to detail – like the paved sands of the entire island that were quietly in place every single day.

 

Maybe it was the uncompromising beauty of the locations, or the richness of colour (that our hazy city-life makes drab and grey), or the sheer understated luxury of the environs that made one feel desperately pampered – spoiled even, as if we were the only ones that truly mattered here, or maybe it was the fact that here, no one else mattered to either of us. It completed us.

Imtiaz Ali: Happily Never After

20 Saturday Feb 2010

Posted by in Art, Literature & Culture, Interviews (All), Interviews: Cinema, Publication: Verve Magazine

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Published: Verve Magazine, Verve Men, February 2010

Photograph: Colston Julian; Illustration: Bappa

Imtiaz01

Director and scriptwriter of popular romantic dramas Jab We Met and Love Aaj Kal, Imtiaz Ali, does not know whether happily-ever-after exists, “since the world is designed for relationship disasters. When people decide to get together, it is not a cerebral decision or a love formula, it’s an instinctive one. The one that got away occupies a person more, and anyone who is accessible becomes ordinary. No relationship can satisfy all the needs of a person. There is a reason why love stories end when they do”. In all his movies, the director believes that if we had the opportunity of seeing what were to happen a few years down the line to his characters, post the kiss-and-make-up; we would not be guaranteed a happy ending. So in a piece of wicked cross-scripting with Sitanshi Talati-Parikh, he plots a volatile fictional love story concocted with the unrelated characters of his two films, to see what would happen if Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan’s characters, Geet (Jab We Met) and Jai (Love Aaj Kal), actually met!

Imtiaz02The Setting

Ten years after Jab We Met (about eight years after Love Aaj Kal). Geet is married to Aditya Kashyap and they have two children. Jai and Meera are also married. There is a crisis of the “end of excitement”.

The Characters
GEET, the essential free spirit, chafes under the boring normalcy of her life. She finds that Aditya Kashyap has changed – or maybe this is who he is – an industrialist who has a lot on his plate. He can’t take off anytime he chooses; having children has also changed the equation. While they balance each other out, she is haunted by the fact that now she doesn’t have a place to reach; without a destination, there is no journey. She is deeply disillusioned by the fact that she has no train to catch, nowhere to run off to with wild abandon and therefore no major thrill that keeps her going. There is a vacuum inside her, working its way towards a silent depression. Something sparks off a renaissance….

ADITYA doesn’t like the fact that his wife, Geet, talks to everyone with unnatural friendliness. This is a part of who she is, and he can’t change that, but it bothers him. He tries to bring a semblance of order in her life, but she constantly resists it. While she needs this stability to balance her out, she tends to react violently to it. Work keeps him so preoccupied that he finds he has less time and patience to pander to her impulsive needs.

JAI always believed in the concept of a live-in relationship as opposed to marriage. His love for Meera keeps him going, but the inability to walk out at any time, to experiment, to go with the flow, or change direction if he so desires, makes him feel shackled. The pressures of life are building up and he’s just looking for an escape route.

MEERA can’t seem to understand what is bothering Jai. She keeps reminding herself that this marriage is what he wanted – he had come looking for her. The fact that he may not be happy worries her, but she doesn’t know what she can do to fix it. She decides to wait and watch for an opportunity when things can go back to normal.

The Situation
Day 1
Geet is driving, with a lot of pent-up rage, to pick up her kids from school. She is manoeuvring the Mumbai traffic, amid construction, while simultaneously on the phone trying to negotiate keeping her maid who suddenly wants to quit. She has woken up early to make aloo parathas for Aditya. Her frustration has been building up for a while but she just doesn’t have the nerve to tell Aditya, “I can’t do this anymore, this is not me!” Suddenly as she is distracted, her car slams into an island, and shudders to a stop. She fumbles, trying to start it while continuing to talk on the phone. The traffic piles up behind her; loud curses can be heard in the background, accompanied by a lot of disgusted gestures.

A car slides into position next to her, a window rolls down and a disgruntled man (Jai) looks at her, saying, “There is a reason why women shouldn’t drive. Why don’t you do something that suits you more…like look after your home, and leave driving to men?” That chauvinistic statement gets Geet completely riled up – the years of dissatisfaction and disillusionment with marriage are simmering under the surface waiting to explode. She gets out of the car to scream at him. Jai has already driven past, the window is up – with the noise of the traffic and his music in the car, he can’t hear her. She can be seen in his rear-view mirror getting smaller and smaller.

She gets back into the car, manages to start it, slams the door and drives after Jai furiously. He enters a tall office building, and the elevator door is about to close behind him, when she wedges a foot into the door. She starts yelling at him, abusing him, trying to get the pent up fury out of her system. She follows him into his office, still yelling about the woes of her life – domesticity, the children, a husband who’s forgotten how to live life. The entire office is looking at them. Suddenly, realising where she is, she flushes a deep red, turns around and leaves. Jai’s visibly shaken; he doesn’t know what hit him. He needs to make a pitch before a very important client, and he can’t perform because he’s so nervous. Stammering and suddenly not his usual confident self, he doesn’t paint a convincing picture. He loses the account…and is completely shattered.

Day 2
Driving to work the next day (at approximately the same time he’d met Geet the day before), Jai, feeling really miserable, suddenly notices her waiting in her car for her children. He immediately swerves to a stop, running over to her to give her a piece of his own mind. His problems are mounting: EMIs, a wife who’s threatening to leave him, the competition…. He ends his tirade with, “Maybe I have a wife who’s a bigger bitch than you are.”

[This is the excitement they are both missing in their lives. An escape from their own problems. Both Geet and Jai are people who would want to breathe more air, do more and say more than their partners.]

The next time they see each other, it’s like they’ve known each other for a long time…. Their vivaciousness and outgoing personalities leave no awkwardness between them. She needs to go back home to Aditya, but Jai suggests an excuse that works well on husbands, she thinks for a moment and gives into the thrill of a new experience, continuing their conversation over another cup of coffee.

Next Week
Jai has an anniversary coming up and Geet needs to shop for Aditya’s birthday. They decide it’s an excuse good enough as any to shop together. Jai confesses that his wife has hated all the gifts he’s bought her in the past, that she’s a very sensitive kind of woman. “She would be happy if she thought that I thought about the gift!” Geet thinks it would be fun to help out, while Jai can help her choose something for her “fuddy-duddy boring industrialist-type of husband”.

And then…
They continue to meet; putting in the effort to look better, in response to the passion and electricity the air. They connect at various levels – they find their childish pursuits a great diversion, which their spouses would not. They gravitate towards each other. Neither wants to commit, but they believe that they have found their soulmate in each other. They are too volatile to actually be able to have a fulfilling, stable relationship together – and they know that. They are both people who are constantly in conflict, it is difficult for them to reach resolve – but they thrive in the conflict.

The Spouses
ADITYA, when he sees the change in Geet, senses that something is not right. He begins to look back at their life and see what’s missing, what is eating away into the Geet he fell in love with. He never confronts her or makes her uncomfortable, but makes an effort to be more attentive. Geet, for her part, can tell that he knows or is aware that something has changed. She finds its oddly disconcerting that he continues to be there for her – often suggesting doing things that she loves, which makes her feel guilty and confused about her feelings. She wants to come out and talk to him about it, but something holds her back – the fear of hurting him. She wishes he would react with anger or violence – not this silent niceness. It makes her feel like a bitch. In the middle of the night, having no one else to talk to, she frequently calls up Jai.

MEERA instinctively knows when Jai is unhappy or is not being faithful, especially with the increasing calls late into the night coming from Geet. Meera’s way of dealing with it is very matter-of-fact. She invites Jai out to his favourite restaurant, dresses up in his favourite outfit; and in the middle of the wine and meal, asks him directly, “Jai, I think you’re seeing somebody…just tell me about it.” Jai looks taken-aback and then decides to come clean. He talks about Geet – a girl whom he has been hanging out with, but insists that there isn’t anything serious between them. “I didn’t tell you because you’d be upset…but I can see I’ve upset you anyway. I’m sorry. But if you say the word, I won’t see her again.” Meera looks at him for a minute and says, “If I ask you not to see her, then I’m making her your lover, so do what you want.”

The End
It appears to be a doomed love story of two people who can’t get rid of each other. Geet and Jai are the kind of people who consume each other – a relationship that scales the heights and plummets to the depths, making it a nervy ride. They make each other more insecure and it leads them to miss the stability provided by their spouses.

Jai meets Geet to tell her that they should stop seeing each other. Geet reacts explosively – talking about how much they are actually made for each other, and how they are not being unfaithful at all. They deliberate breaking up often. Eventually, in the midst of an emotional scene, Geet perks up with a suggestion – if they must end it, then why not with a bang – something that matches their personality? And she reminds him about the trip they had spoken about taking together…