Mid-Day Opinion: Musafir & yaaron, ghar & thikana...

Vedika Pinto and Vikrant Massey in a still from the Netflix series ‘Musafir Café’

When a couple breaks up, is it usually one person, who actually goes through the heavy-lifting heartbreak, the other moves on relatively more easily - I ask Sharanya Rajgopal, who's written-created the Netflix romance, Musafir Cafe.

It's about a girl, Sudha, 24 (Vedika Pinto), who picks a brighter career in Bombay, over her boyfriend, Chander (Vikrant Massey), and actively encourages him to do the same, i.e. fulfill his own dream of setting up a hill-station cafe.

He's distraught. She's a realist. Both carry on with their lives. As everyone inevitably does. The series flips between flashforwards to the present, where Chander runs an artsy joint in Mussoorie, with his current partner, Preeti (Mahima Makwana).

Sharanya tells me, "Sure, heartbreak isn't equal all the time. Because the way you love, and the stage of life [you're in] isn't the same, either."

That said, she reasons, "Dil toh sabka tootta hai (all hearts break). Love is easy. Loving is not. The hardest part is the first step of walking out of something not right, or healthy. And when you choose yourself - you also let down a version of you, in the eyes of the one you love."

Sharanya Rajgopal, the show's writer-creator

She means that for Sudha, whose own future would've panned out so differently, if she chose it another way. That counter-factual is true for all. The show captures it quite unapologetically.

In fact, there is a line in the show about how plans change/evolve, Sharanya points out, that appears twice - in the present, Chander tells Preeti; in the past, Sudha tells Chander.

Sharanya wasn't aware of this repetition, and wanted it snipped. The editor (Yasha Ramchandani) suggested to keep it. It made sense to complete the circle.

I realise Musafir Cafe - a temperately paced, short, and sweet romance, softly poetic/profound, in parts - is a bit like how Sharanya herself weighs in on love.

The distance between how she feels, and what she's written, nearing zero. This is rare, even for OTTs. She considers the script as "dipping into truths" from her own life.

Ever since the series dropped online, July 24, she's been overwhelmed by responses on her DMs/inbox - mostly with audiences relating their own life's stories with what's onscreen.

What drew me to Musafir Cafe, actually, is how it normalises friendship, before a relationship, first.

That's what Sudha and Chander are, to begin (and end) with. Likewise, Preeti shares an independent rapport with a visiting writer, Rahil (Rajeev Siddhartha). There's an old couple, Mark (Adil Hussain), Neelima (Sadiya Siddiqui), running a homestay together. They never got married. All lives somehow intertwine.

You can tell why this could be a conversation-starter of sorts. Firstly, one barely sees pure romances - shorn of spectacle/scale, or grander themes, and of the sort that simply internalises emotions, conflicts/chaos between multiple desires - on the desi screen.

Sharanya agrees, "Take Gulzar's Ijaazat, Aandhi…" Her own influences include Mani Ratnam's Mouna Ragam, Alai Payuthey, Richard Linklater's Before Trilogy.

The last such sober show I recall, obviously kinda different/semi-conservative in its tone, yet in the Gen Z space, is Sooraj Barjatya's Bada Naam Karenge, that remained under-watched, perhaps, for its platform (Sony LIV).

Musafir Cafe is based on the male, Hindi author Divya Prakash Dubey's 2016 book of the same name. Which, as per Sharanya, is mainly the conversation between Sudha and Chander: "Divya's got insights into heartland India."

I sense much of the writing for Sudha must've come from Sharanya: "She was the hardest to navigate - it's so easy to reduce her!"

Maybe, Sudha really wasn't so into Chander as he was into her? "It's not about less, or more. The pack of cards she got dealt were different," Sharanya argues. To be fair, she remains consistent with life's choices, throughout. It's the guy, who brings "shaadi on the table."

As per her line in the show, is it true that "we can't unlove someone we have loved once"? "It's not possible to truly move on, ever," Sharanya reckons.

Her point, being, any relationship, whether or not romantic, chiefly equals memories, that reappear in various forms - "photograph, perfume, food, song… that will briefly transport you back to when you were loved, with that somebody, you left once. Both having left a part of themselves with each other."

I wonder if Sharanya considered reuniting Sudha and Chander who, to use the Americanese, never quite found the full ‘closure'. It's hard for her to be "objective", she reasons, and that she was more concerned with being true to the characters/world.

Musafir Cafe, warmly directed by Ruchir Arun, ends on an indefinite note. An open-end is deemed art-house in popular cinema. It usually means subsequent season for an OTT series.

Sharanya tells me she's not done with these ladies and gentlemen yet: "Also, possibilities for what could have happened [with the characters] has a way of never really leaving your subconscious [as an audience]."

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.