On request from my dear friend Nikhil, I watched the 82nd episode of Yeh Hai Aashiqui. This is the episode that he himself has written the screenplay and the story.
Background
To begin with I would like to state few things that will add more weight to the review I am about to give. I stopped watching T.V. completely. For the last 3 months , I haven't switched on the T.V even once ever since I started living alone. Prior to that too, there wasn't anything that made me sit on the sofa, flip channels and watch. It's only with my wife, on weekends, when I give her company in watching TV after a nice relaxed lunch. That's about it. Of course on some rare occasions when I take the remote to watch, my mind becomes out of control. I get this urge to keep flipping channels, unable to keep focus on one channel. Say there is one good movie that does come, my impulse is to watch it till the end and follow it up with another as you know, 3 hours have gone by, let me enjoy bit more kind of feeling that seeps in. Before you know it, all the time is gone and I feel guilty about it later on. That's the reason I stayed away from it, kind of consciously.
The entertainment for me is purely with the movies/series that I often download from the net. Series are highly addictive and if I am on to one it takes at least few weeks/months to get away from it. Apart from that books are another go to things. Talking about TV, serials like Yeh Hai Aashiqui, Pyaar ka the end, Emotional Atyachar were some of the ones I heard about as they were loyally watched by mom and wife. All these are single episode shows. During those times, I lock myself in another room either reading a book/watching a series or movie and only come out if that 'idiot box' is switched off.
On some occasions I did manage to watch and I felt disgusted watching them especially Emotional Atchyachar. Every episode is about a gullible lady/guy who is trapped by the other sex either by faking love or by blackmail. The show goes on to show how the affair started, what made the protagonist succumb to it, what odds they have been through, the trauma, the family backlash they faced and finally how they moved on with their lives. There is nothing positive about it. Basically this is a staged show of real life events. No matter which episode we are looking there is always a extra-martial affair/ forced sexual encounters shown. It is way of gaining TRP's by these titillation. That's a very big NO in my book.
Coming to Yeh Hai Aashiqui, I had kind of watched two shows in parts. The main theme of the show is how two people fall in love in an unusual situations. The couple may belong to same age or different age or one may be divorcee etc. Different mixes and different situations as I said. One was about a girl who befriends a local mobile repair shop owner by repeatedly going to the shop on pretext of some small problem. In the due course the owner falls in love by seeing her overtures. Unknown to him the girls actual idea is to spite her ex-boyfriend. When the shop owner does find out, he gets very angry and they both have a heated arguments. The show wraps up with the girl feeling guilty and then realizing that she indeed was in love all throughout, goes to him and confesses. The other one I did see involved some 90's setup where a local gang leader who is on the run from police gets saved by a girl in the first few scenes and I didn't catch the rest.
I wasn't happy with both the episodes. They felt too unrealistic with forced conversations, bad acting and pacing. Basically I wasn't really enthused to watch and was thinking this too would be one such. Now back to the review.
Story -
The story starts off in a college campus where we see a guy walking in an alley, fully immersed in texting on his mobile and accidentally bumps against a girl who is standing alongside the wall with her friends. His phone falls down and the mobile parts fall apart, the backcover, battery. Rather than apologizing, he bends down starts picking up the pieces. The lady gets miffed and scolds him, to which he responds by apologizing and gets going. One of lady's friend Shikha's gets curious and inquiring gets to know that the guys name is Vicky and he is the most introverted person on the campus, and that he has no friends at all. Shikha is one of those persons who loves to help people and doesn't like to see people being sad or lonely. For her it's kind of 'project' that she needs to complete successfully. She tries to talk to Vicky on some pretext but her overtures are rebuffed. She gets miffed and this further strengthens her resolve to find more about him and get him to friend her. The only way she realizes to do it is via connecting to him in virtual world with a pseudonym 'Sweet-Princess' and he in turn is already undercover with a pseudonym 'Slinet Knight'. Taking a chance she pings him via a la facebook site as a completely new person and to her surprise he responds. That chat proceeds for quite long in the night only to resume the next day. The relationship starts building up gradually. Both of them fall in love but Vicky a.k.a Silent Knight refuses to admit it while Shika would like to take it to the next level. Why is Vicky so afraid? What is it that makes him reluctant to friend anyone? Would he be able to to take if he knows who Sweet Princess really is? That forms the crux of the story.
Review
***Spolers Ahead***
I absolutely loved the entire episode start to finish. It's been such a long time since I had seen a proper romantic flick and this one truly moved me especially the end. Bringing virtual romances to life, I feel, is a very hard thing to do. It is easy to capture the moods if it involves the people meeting often and being together. This one though almost half of its length of the movie is revolving around the main protagonists whose only link is via internet, starting with chats, moving on to voice calls and then finally video calls. In the video calls too both don a mask as Vicky is highly insecure to face the real world and Shikha too feels afraid on the backlash if any if she gets revealed.
Having seen some of his past work, I can say Nikhil aces in this department. In one of his first attempts in penning a novel for which he had written almost 100 odd pages, one story revolves around two couple confessing their love for each other through text messages. In that first draft, that part was perfectly written and beautifully captured the feelings. The other instance was a short-video that he had made as part of the college project where, believe it or not, the whole video only takes place in web browser and via Facebook chats. This was about varied reactions of guy and his friends who get to know the world is going to end the next day or something of that sort.
The idea is so very unique and it really blew me away. That was an awesome video and if I am not mistaken it did win some award for him. Here too as I already said the small chats, perfectly timed emoticons, the conversations that they have online and through video everything is so very well directed it leaves you with a mushy and warm feeling in your heart.
The best bits I loved were the toasting each other with a beer ( I was expecting more like tea/coffee), going out on a virtual date, being at same restaurant but not meeting each other. These are not totally unique per se, but by fitting in such things taking into consideration the episode is limited to 40-45 minutes, is a tremendous job. This was amply showcased in the scene where, Vicky gets totally zapped on seeing his girlfriend holding hands with his best friend, shown while revealing his flashback. Girlfriend calmly dismisses his anger by telling him directly to his face that he is now a 'ex-boyfriend' and not a 'boyfriend' in kind of rude and arrogant way. The usual cliched scene is where the girl panics, tries to put up a act and this would have led to few more scenes after which Vicky would have dumped her.
Overall I loved this episode and I am eagerly looking forward to his future endeavors.
Wish you all the very best Niks!
Background
To begin with I would like to state few things that will add more weight to the review I am about to give. I stopped watching T.V. completely. For the last 3 months , I haven't switched on the T.V even once ever since I started living alone. Prior to that too, there wasn't anything that made me sit on the sofa, flip channels and watch. It's only with my wife, on weekends, when I give her company in watching TV after a nice relaxed lunch. That's about it. Of course on some rare occasions when I take the remote to watch, my mind becomes out of control. I get this urge to keep flipping channels, unable to keep focus on one channel. Say there is one good movie that does come, my impulse is to watch it till the end and follow it up with another as you know, 3 hours have gone by, let me enjoy bit more kind of feeling that seeps in. Before you know it, all the time is gone and I feel guilty about it later on. That's the reason I stayed away from it, kind of consciously.
The entertainment for me is purely with the movies/series that I often download from the net. Series are highly addictive and if I am on to one it takes at least few weeks/months to get away from it. Apart from that books are another go to things. Talking about TV, serials like Yeh Hai Aashiqui, Pyaar ka the end, Emotional Atyachar were some of the ones I heard about as they were loyally watched by mom and wife. All these are single episode shows. During those times, I lock myself in another room either reading a book/watching a series or movie and only come out if that 'idiot box' is switched off.
On some occasions I did manage to watch and I felt disgusted watching them especially Emotional Atchyachar. Every episode is about a gullible lady/guy who is trapped by the other sex either by faking love or by blackmail. The show goes on to show how the affair started, what made the protagonist succumb to it, what odds they have been through, the trauma, the family backlash they faced and finally how they moved on with their lives. There is nothing positive about it. Basically this is a staged show of real life events. No matter which episode we are looking there is always a extra-martial affair/ forced sexual encounters shown. It is way of gaining TRP's by these titillation. That's a very big NO in my book.
Coming to Yeh Hai Aashiqui, I had kind of watched two shows in parts. The main theme of the show is how two people fall in love in an unusual situations. The couple may belong to same age or different age or one may be divorcee etc. Different mixes and different situations as I said. One was about a girl who befriends a local mobile repair shop owner by repeatedly going to the shop on pretext of some small problem. In the due course the owner falls in love by seeing her overtures. Unknown to him the girls actual idea is to spite her ex-boyfriend. When the shop owner does find out, he gets very angry and they both have a heated arguments. The show wraps up with the girl feeling guilty and then realizing that she indeed was in love all throughout, goes to him and confesses. The other one I did see involved some 90's setup where a local gang leader who is on the run from police gets saved by a girl in the first few scenes and I didn't catch the rest.
I wasn't happy with both the episodes. They felt too unrealistic with forced conversations, bad acting and pacing. Basically I wasn't really enthused to watch and was thinking this too would be one such. Now back to the review.
Story -
The story starts off in a college campus where we see a guy walking in an alley, fully immersed in texting on his mobile and accidentally bumps against a girl who is standing alongside the wall with her friends. His phone falls down and the mobile parts fall apart, the backcover, battery. Rather than apologizing, he bends down starts picking up the pieces. The lady gets miffed and scolds him, to which he responds by apologizing and gets going. One of lady's friend Shikha's gets curious and inquiring gets to know that the guys name is Vicky and he is the most introverted person on the campus, and that he has no friends at all. Shikha is one of those persons who loves to help people and doesn't like to see people being sad or lonely. For her it's kind of 'project' that she needs to complete successfully. She tries to talk to Vicky on some pretext but her overtures are rebuffed. She gets miffed and this further strengthens her resolve to find more about him and get him to friend her. The only way she realizes to do it is via connecting to him in virtual world with a pseudonym 'Sweet-Princess' and he in turn is already undercover with a pseudonym 'Slinet Knight'. Taking a chance she pings him via a la facebook site as a completely new person and to her surprise he responds. That chat proceeds for quite long in the night only to resume the next day. The relationship starts building up gradually. Both of them fall in love but Vicky a.k.a Silent Knight refuses to admit it while Shika would like to take it to the next level. Why is Vicky so afraid? What is it that makes him reluctant to friend anyone? Would he be able to to take if he knows who Sweet Princess really is? That forms the crux of the story.
Review
***Spolers Ahead***
I absolutely loved the entire episode start to finish. It's been such a long time since I had seen a proper romantic flick and this one truly moved me especially the end. Bringing virtual romances to life, I feel, is a very hard thing to do. It is easy to capture the moods if it involves the people meeting often and being together. This one though almost half of its length of the movie is revolving around the main protagonists whose only link is via internet, starting with chats, moving on to voice calls and then finally video calls. In the video calls too both don a mask as Vicky is highly insecure to face the real world and Shikha too feels afraid on the backlash if any if she gets revealed.
Having seen some of his past work, I can say Nikhil aces in this department. In one of his first attempts in penning a novel for which he had written almost 100 odd pages, one story revolves around two couple confessing their love for each other through text messages. In that first draft, that part was perfectly written and beautifully captured the feelings. The other instance was a short-video that he had made as part of the college project where, believe it or not, the whole video only takes place in web browser and via Facebook chats. This was about varied reactions of guy and his friends who get to know the world is going to end the next day or something of that sort.
The idea is so very unique and it really blew me away. That was an awesome video and if I am not mistaken it did win some award for him. Here too as I already said the small chats, perfectly timed emoticons, the conversations that they have online and through video everything is so very well directed it leaves you with a mushy and warm feeling in your heart.
The best bits I loved were the toasting each other with a beer ( I was expecting more like tea/coffee), going out on a virtual date, being at same restaurant but not meeting each other. These are not totally unique per se, but by fitting in such things taking into consideration the episode is limited to 40-45 minutes, is a tremendous job. This was amply showcased in the scene where, Vicky gets totally zapped on seeing his girlfriend holding hands with his best friend, shown while revealing his flashback. Girlfriend calmly dismisses his anger by telling him directly to his face that he is now a 'ex-boyfriend' and not a 'boyfriend' in kind of rude and arrogant way. The usual cliched scene is where the girl panics, tries to put up a act and this would have led to few more scenes after which Vicky would have dumped her.
Overall I loved this episode and I am eagerly looking forward to his future endeavors.
Wish you all the very best Niks!
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