Insta’s lost and found generation

Parbina Rashid

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Ghosting, delulu, rizz, situationship… now that these ‘words’ have enriched our vocabulary, it’s time to understand the emotion they carry. Getting ‘ghosted’ feels terrible, but getting blocked on social media after a break-up is the worst thing to happen to anyone! Well, life is not easy, but life in the times of Insta is particularly difficult. Not when likes, reels, followers, views, subscribers validate each of our actions.

On this premise is built debutant director Arjun Varain Singh’s ‘Kho Gaye Hum Kahan’. Imaad (Siddhant Chaturvedi) sets the tone in his opening stand-up comedy session: “I read somewhere that an average person checks his mobile phone 224 times a day. If you indulge in an activity 224 times a day, it’s not called an activity, but an addiction.”

It’s not that Imaad is immune to the lure of social media. He is a Tinder addict. He needs to go ‘viral’ to pull audiences to his show. His two best friends are gym instructor Neil (Adarsh Gourav) and Ahana (Ananya Panday), a corporate employee. Neil needs a selfie with Malaika Arora (she plays herself) to establish himself as a celebrity instructor, and Ahana uses Insta to catch her ex-boyfriend’s attention, even if that means wearing a bikini in the washroom.

From the stable of Farhan-Zoya Akhtar, ‘Kho Gaye Hum Kahan’ is about three besties living in Mumbai. Moving away from the Jai-Veeru kind of friendship, the Akhtars earlier gave us the fabulous trios in ‘Dil Chahta Hai’ and ‘Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara’. Pure bromance. They deviate from her tried-and-tested formula and make this trio a mixed one. And, it works. It’s a delightful group with no sexual tension whatsoever.

Imaad is the son of a rich businessman who carries trauma from the past and attends therapy sessions. His commitment phobia messes up his relationship with Simran (Kalki Koechlin), a photographer who is working on a project called ‘Humans of Tinder’. Neil, from a middle-class family, is trying to get out of the rut by planning his own fitness studio. Ahana’s secure life with a stable relationship comes crashing down when boyfriend Rohan (Rohan Gurbaxani) dumps her for someone else.

Through this eclectic mix, Singh captures the nuances of the Insta generation.

The three friends may be sitting in the same room, but they would be roaming in their own digital worlds. Even their moods depend on what they see on their Insta handles. Here’s one particular scene that stands out. Ahana is trying to make a business plan. She keeps her phone away to avoid distractions. But the phone keeps beeping and her resolve breaks. She responds to the lure of notifications.

However, it’s not the digital dalliances but their coming together for a start-up that gives the story its backbone. Ahana quits her job to make it happen and Imaad offers his inheritance to see it through. The track compels us to invest our time in tracking their trajectory. Not because of the ups and downs in the venture or their relationships, for most situations seemed air-brushed to leave us with a high, but for the outstanding performances of all four lead actors.

Both Chaturvedi and Gourav have proved their credentials as solid actors in Bollywood. They live up to our expectations and more. Especially Gourav. His expressions and body language are spot-on. Our heart goes out to him when he cringes after being told not to ‘cross the line’ by his client. Chaturvedi’s comedy may not be rollicking, but his persona is. Kalki is good as usual. Ananya is the revelation here. Her vulnerability and her desperation to win back her boyfriend touch the right chord and she completely aces her part.

Influencer Lala’s (Anya Singh) character is half-baked, but with her eccentricities, she paves the path for some profound thoughts to follow.

Cameramen Prasad Chaurasia and Tanay Satnam capture happening places with their youthful vibes. But the loneliness — an integral part of this generation which is so eloquently put by Simran, ‘It’s the digital age, lagta hai connected hain par shaayad itne akele kabhi nahin the’ (it’s the digital age, we feel connected but we’ve never been so alone before) — finds an expression too. In the soulless cityscape of Mumbai, which the camera pans off and on, the message that comes out is that no matter how hard one tries to fill it with nightclubs and groovy music (music composers OAFF and Savera have done a good job), the city will remain distant unless one reaches out to real people, and not Insta reels!