Living in the mundane dailyness of the world, everyone juggles their way through. Engrossed in work, family and some unfulfilled desires, the act of living itself becomes a kind of struggle. Sometimes, along the way, lives intertwine, eyes meet, smiles exchange and hearts sparkle. Two people come together to discover a sense of meaning in their lives. Love happens. However, soon, the rainbow created by their union is met with a thundering blow. It is not just the two who decide their fate but also the world around them. That’s where Love Storiyaan begins.
Directed by: Hardik Mehta, Vivek Soni, Shazia Iqbal, Akshay Indikar, Archana Phadke and Collin D’Cunha
Streaming on: Prime Video
It tells six extraordinary stories of real people who found love in the most unusual places. These are tales of determination and resilience of the human spirit. For instance, the story of Sharmila Saha, who leaves behind her country, her name and her religion to stay with the love of her life Sunit Kumar Saha in Homecoming, directed by Shazia Iqbal. Or in Archana Phadke’s Faasley, where Dhanya Ravindran goes to war-torn Afghanistan in order to stay with her Afghan husband Homayon Khoram. One might lose out on truth while trying to tell an engaging tale. Hence, the fictional recreations in each story gives them the right balance to bloom.
In Vivek Soni’s Love On Air, we meet Rajani and Nick, who found each other through the radio. The entire episode is told with multiple perspectives. It begins with Rajani and Nick sitting beside each other at the radio station as they recount their love story. It is intercut with the accounts of others including their son, Mahyaan. We also follow them going on a car journey somewhere which finds a heartwarming resolve in the end. Along with that, as the two reflect back on their younger days, we see an imagined version which has a stylistic symmetry to director Wong Kar-Wai’s, In The Mood For Love (2000). It works perfectly in giving a glimpse of the early days of love and also invokes a sense of nostalgia. The inventive storytelling of Vivek feels as transformative as the life led by the two. It is edited beautifully, with a narrative ease, coupled with emotional highs.
This is a pattern followed in all the other stories as well where it is not just a simple recreation of the past but a thoughtful blend of the images of love. Instead of just telling what happened, it creates a complete picture of how it happened. Even though all the six stories are about different people, there is a common thread that binds them together. The earthly fragrance of one mingles with the stream-like flow of the other. Something that Aekta says about her husband Ullekh in Hardik Mehta’s An Unsuitable Girl, finds resonance in Akshay Indikar’s Raah Sangharsh Ki. Aekta recalls the verses of the poet Jigar Muradabadi, where he says that loving is not easy; it is a lake of fire which one can cross only by submerging inside. Akshay ends his story of an upper caste IIT graduate falling in love with a Dalit woman fighting for tribal rights, by having them walk towards a lake as the sun sets in the background. It feels like a visual depiction of the poet’s lines heard in Hardik’s episode, which has a significance to all the six stories.
It all culminates in the last story, Love Beyond Labels, featuring Dipan Chakraborty and Tista Das, both of whom were born in the wrong bodies. The two find individual moments of liberation after their sex-change surgery and come together in a shared experience of love. But, reaching to this ‘happily ever after’ was filled with a dozen hardships. Love Storiyaan is a testament to the fact that love is always a work-in-progress. Produced by Karan Johar, whose films have spearheaded the spirit of love in different ways, these real-life stories feel closer to the world we inhabit which is filled with social inequalities of many kinds. Here, love doesn’t automatically solve everything but instead becomes a weapon in fighting against everything. Love is not just the way but the means to carve out one’s own way. All the stories leave you with a bittersweet feeling of how these people found freedom with each other even when it meant inviting an air of dissonance from others around. Watching it feels like finding a comforting shade in the scorching afternoon heat. And as it turns out, the rainbow continues to bloom amidst the thunder in the sky.
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