Massan
When I think of Masaan, I cannot just think of a single character or an actor. So I won’t be writing about one. I’d be writing about the movie, as a whole. Which includes Varun Grover’s screenplay, Neeraj Ghaywan’s direction, and the two stories of Devi and Deepak with multiple stories within. The multiple narratives definitely have things in common, they have feelings in common. This might just include closure and escape. It is about first love, dreams that matter, and the society that disapproves of them.
Deepak who’s a civil engineering student, feels the need to break through the casteist succession in work. This seems like his escape from ‘masaan’. When love enters his life, nothing changes but the fact that both love and dreams converge. He meets Shaalu and like the poems she’s into, their time together seems poetic too. The dates and meetings get real when Deepak tells her that getting together might not be that easy, after all.
The other story focuses on Devi, the burden of social taboos, the fractured relationship with her father, Vidyadhar and the grief, for more reasons than one. She’s trying to find her way out from the whispers created by society. There’s also the past that seems to haunt her, something that hasn’t been talked about. Like her mother’s death, which created a rift between the father-daughter, there’s another death that brings in the same feelings.
While love brings in a sense of happiness in Deepak’s life, it takes more of it away when it’s gone. As the last piece of Shaalu, he keeps her ring with him but nothing seems to bring him peace. The ring that seems to hold him together, brings the much-needed closure, and hence fills the void when separated from him.
For Devi, there’s the realization that her father did care for her, all that time. It’s not the ability to find closure after the death but to accept what happened, without blaming herself or her father.
When the stories meet, it becomes about moving on, where ‘the ring’ becomes the medium. These stories that meet at ‘Sangam’, provide a new direction to two people finding an escape.