Main Vaapas Aaunga

Main Vaapas Aaunga Movie Review Rating:

Star Cast: Naseeruddin Shah, Diljit Dosanjh, Sharvari, Vedang Raina, Rajat Kapoor, Sanjay Suri

Director: Imtiaz Ali

What’s Good: Almost everything about the film

What’s Bad: The length could have been shorter, and the music more passionate

Loo Break: When you come vaapas, you will have missed something!

Watch or Not?: Yes, of course.

Language: Hindi

Available On: Theatrical release

Runtime: 166 Minutes

User Rating:

Films about Partition and its traumas have been widely explored in Hindi and Punjabi, and (usually unrequited) love stories set against this backdrop have also been shown a lot. Main Vaapas Aaunga adds to the tally, but in terms of cinematic and artistic caliber, it must rank above most such sagas.

Ishar Singh Grewal (Naseeruddin Shah) is 90-plus and suffers from age-related dementia, but, as in such cases, has extremely sharp memories of his past—his teenage and early adulthood, that is, in Sargodha, now in Pakistan. And thereby hangs a (love) tale.

Ishar, a Sikh, was known as Keenu (essayed in the younger role by Vedang Raina) and had vowed to his ladylove Jiya, a.k.a. Afsana (Sharvari), a Muslim, that he would never leave her (during the post-Partition holocaust) and if he did, would come back (Main Vaapas Aaunga) for her. Their love was inspired by poetry and was also poetic in itself, and the youngsters stood their ground in the face of the senseless communal hatred fostered by vested interests and their effects on their normal families.

Jiya’s special tweaks of character included her cute gesture of telling Keenu to ‘now leave’ after each meeting and her single earring (with the right one missing). Keenu, in turn, was so devoted to her that he never bothered about his own safety when he dared to visit her clandestinely at her home, not for the wrong reasons, but merely to see if they could plan their life together despite the dreaded atmosphere around.

Now a (very) old man, Ishar commands his driver to drive to Sargodha, and they reach the border post. When the authorities stop him and explain that there have been two nations since 1947, he collapses.

Meanwhile, Ishar’s grandson, Nirvair (Diljit Dosanjh), a software professional, quits his third job in the US out of dissatisfaction, and when told that his granddad may pass on any time, flies down to India. Ishar is incoherent, conversing with mumbles only to Nirvair, who later realizes that Ishar has an unfinished mission in their hometown, Sargodha. The whole truth is unearthed by the end of the movie, and happily, Imtiaz Ali shows an open end where Ishar is not shown passing away, but his ladylove shows him the ‘Leave now!’ gesture in his imagination: symbolic, perhaps, of his life being complete now.

Main Vaapas Aaunga Movie Review: Script Analysis

The script is all heart (and all art!) from beginning to end. The implications on normal human beings of the lacerations initiated by the British are scathingly moving and can bring lumps in the throat and tears to the susceptible viewer. The script nevertheless ensures a tenacious undercurrent of humor, oodles of cuteness, and simple family emotions as it moves along, right from the endearing beginning of Ishar watching the news on television and his conversation with the newsreader! What I loved in particular was how the cynical son (Rajat Kapoor) and the lucre-conscious daughter-in-law (Anjana Sukhani) gradually join Nirvair in his mission to find the truth. Families must remain families: this message rings loud and clear.

The final outcome of sympathetic Pakistani friends taking Nirvair through the family’s Pakistani roots has an uncannily similar feel to the recent Ikkis, heightened by the fact that even in that real drama, Dharmendra’s character wanted to visit Sargodha in his declining years and similarly needed a helpful Pakistani family.

But the reason for doing so here is vastly different, obviously. Imtiaz Ali and Mayanika Mahtani’s script (thankfully without portfolio distinctions like story, screenplay, and dialogues, because any script for a film is teamwork) is caressing, super-empathetic, and, if I may use a seemingly incongruous adjective here, adorable to the extreme. The references to Martians and Mexico, for example, are classic.

The minutiae are too many to elucidate, and mentioning them in any case can dilute the enjoyment for viewers. But how many tales of tragic love bring a smile to the viewer when he leaves the hall?

Main Vaapas Aaunga Movie Review: Star Performance

Naseeruddin Shah delivers a performance that shows that even at (a real) 75, he is in supreme command of his skills as an actor and decidedly getting better! Enacting Ishar, he drowns his persona into Ishar’s character, who is seeking closure from his unredeemed past. This all the more as he has moved on (like many a Partition victim) and now has accumulated family as well as fortune despite the hurt closeted within him.

Diljit Dosanjh has a seemingly one-dimensional role, but he is outstanding in the way his underplayed character makes an impact. Vedang Raina is superb as the young Keenu, portraying lovestruck passion on one hand and being confused with his dilemmas along with determination on the other.

Sharvari acquits herself passably, but methinks she is miscast. Banita Sandhu’s portrayal of Nirvair’s love is alright, with her Westernized Hindi diction spot-on. As the old Pali, Vinod Nagpal of Humlog and Buniyaad iconic fame, is almost unrecognizable, he stuns in a cameo: he is 85 in real life! Sanjay Suri, almost unrecognizable again, and Rajat Kapoor, as the initially dour father of Nirvair and Ishar’s son, also impress. The supporting actors and actresses are all impressive, and Manish Chaudhari as Muzaffar, Dolly Ahluwalia as Keenu’s grandmother, and Debasree Ghosh as Ishar’s nurse deserve special mention among them.