Holding logic to ransom

Parbina Rashid

As a subject, filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt is any journalist’s delight. His imaginative thoughts and carefully chosen words can make even a novice produce a good copy. He is the Bollywood personality who has mastered the art of doling out the right mix of logic and drama at press conferences and other media interactions.

But as an author of the book, All That Could Have Been, he fails to recreate the same magic. Co-authored with Suhrita Sengupta, Bhatt builds up the lead character, Vasudha Prasad, a single mother of an eight-year-old, with the sensibilities of a Mills and Boons novel but with the trappings of Indian morality.

A battered wife, whose husband goes missing for years leaving her with no option but to work as a florist at a five-star hotel, an understanding mother-in-law who volunteers to be put in an old-age home to give her duty-bound daughter-in-law a second chance at life, and finally a billionaire Prince Charming who falls for her after listening to her compassionate talk with the flowers she is supposed to put in the hotel guests’ rooms. Reminds you of Paulo Coelho’s famous line… ‘When you want something desperately, the whole universe conspires to make it happen for you?’ Yes, the universe does more than its bits — he picking her up for a plum posting in Dubai, he sending her son to a prestigious boarding school in Singapore and he embracing her with open arms and heart.

But the same universe does an about-turn when the missing husband, a driver by profession, makes an entry, to realise what he is up against. And to make the lady feel guilty about her new-found happiness, Hari Prasad, the husband, confesses to a crime he never committed. Well, for some strange logic, his ploy works and it stops Vasudha from tying the knot with her lover. And what does the billionaire love-boy does? Following some equally strange logic, he wills his property to Vasudha and her son and blows himself up in a minefield in Naxalite-infested Bastar area.

She lives on… for her son, and once he is a grown man, she blows herself up in the same minefield.

An end which one would not expect from two people who have seen life from close quarters, who have faced personal and professional demons only to come out stronger, but then, love as they say, follows no rules and make people behave out of character. Why would, otherwise, the tech-savvy hero, who is connected with the whole world through WhatsApp and Facebook write Vasudha’s name again and again on a piece of paper, thus giving away his feelings for her?

One may punch holes in the storyline, but nobody can find fault with the pace of the story. Executed in a dialogue format, the plot moves fast, its easy language effectively creates a backdrop, which the present-day WhatsApp generation can actually relate to.

The cover page comes with a note that this book is now going to be made into a major motion picture called Hamaari Adhuri Kahaani. Shouldn’t it be called Hamaari Unconvincing Kahaani?