True love finds a way

Manpriya Singh

Netflix seems to have taken a fancy for the India that is so complex that it is actually incredible. After its super successful stints with the Indian underworld (Sacred Games), phishing scams that drew almost admiration rather than ire (Jamtara) comes the subject of love titled after the eternal symbol of love Taj Mahal 1989. The series straddles through eight principal characters and in that measure four different love stories that are set amongst different age groups and definitions of love.

Accordingly, there’s Rashmi Malik in love with her boyfriend Dharam Awasthi (played by Paras Priyadarshan) who doesn’t believe in the stereotype that men are interested in sex while women in romance. Her boyfriend on the other side is the sorts who contemplate in college canteen whether Mohammad Rafi was getting a lot of action in bed because how else can one sing so well? Sarita ma’am’s (played well by Geetanjali Kulkarni) is a love story that you have read, heard about several times before. In a love marriage with a philosophy professor Akhtar Begh (played equally well by none other than Neeraj Kabi) she suddenly feels stuck by a husband who doesn’t romance her anymore. It’s one of those passionate romances to whom marriage and a child happened. Nothing new here. “When do you know the age for love has passed,” she questions looking at the camera, in a very Wolf of Wall Street style, making it hard to give into escapism. For a series set in not this era, principal characters talking to the camera is a mismatch of sorts.

So are a whole lot scenes and dialogues make it difficult (if not a challenge) to connect with the time zone in question. Right from a naïve Lucknow school girl threatening to “break up” with her boyfriend who does not approve of her city to a very familiar red plastic cola bottle that is the bane of today (not 1989) to a background student in a college canteen wearing a check shirt that could pretty well be from Zara. You get the picture. However, courtesy stupendously slow pace there is no missing out on other details likely to evoke nostalgia, for instance I love You Rasna commercials, cassettes that had a Side A or Side B, paper weights, rotary dial telephones, fiat cars, old currency notes et al along with several aesthetically shot sepia scenes and for which credit goes to director of photography Will Humphris.

What needs a round of applause is the love that stands true, the test of time and a lot of other societal challenges, depicted by the love story of Subhakar Mishra (Danish Husain) married to Mumtaz (played exceptionally well by Sheeba Chaddha). Every little scene spills an anomaly, an MA in philosophy (gold medalist) who chose to be a teacher; a tailor at the corner of the street, living with a tobacco chewing former sex worker turned grocery seller. What you have is a love story exceptionally more profound than all of the others put together.

While comedy, action and thrill is not something that Taj Mahal 1989 can be accused of, yet the drunken conversations between friends contemplating why do we drink against the background score of lilting Urdu poetry, a capitalist Sikh trying to woo his communist lady love by buying similar ten khaki shirts or with a Hindi speech do draw a few smirks.

Whether it’s a drag or keeps you glued also depends on the episode you are at, but it’s one of the series that you somehow want to brave out just guided by curiosity as to where does it lead eventually? The pace and even the plot both build up almost in the last quarter of the series as everyone’s definition of love has evolved by then. Reminding us once again, one of the sayings by Professor Akhtar Begh, “Love is a mutating virus that can’t be understood at any stage.” That’s true of a whole lot of other things.

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