Wake up call

What do I write about Wake Up Sid? I do not really want to dissect it critically; it’s so innocently brilliant that you feel like sparing it of the critic’s weapons. Well, to put it simply, Wake Up Sid is like coming home to love. It is a wake up call to all those who create a mayhem about falling in love, who rake up a melodrama more often than not...for, love may also happen, just like that! The film gives you a feel that such love can perhaps only happen in Bombay, our very own Bombay. The disclaimer in the very beginning of the film apologizes for referring to the city as Bombay more often than as Mumbai recalling the agonizing history of the riots that had tore the most tolerant city into shreds. At the same time, it overwrites that history of hatred with a simple tale of love between a Calcutta girl who comes to the city to become independent and a Bombay boy who refuses to grow up. The Chor Bazaar, the Marine Lines, the Bandra housing complexes, and several nooks and corners of the city feature in a big-small way to consolidate the foundation of the lover’s nest the film builds brick by brick.

Sid (Ranbir Kapoor) and Ayesha (Konkona Sen Sharma) are both familiar to us: they are with us in college, in our office, on the roads we travel everyday, in the cafes we often visit. It’s the era of the middle class youth: self-respect, independence, open-mindedness, and responsibility. The film celebrates the spirit of the Generation X, but without moralising, without sounding didactic. Like all good art, it shows; doesn’t tell. Sid’s mother (Supriya Pathak) with her flawed English and awfully middle class dress sense is absolutely loveable. She has never been to school, but has grown up into a modern mother who doesn’t shed buckets of tears at the prospect of her only son living in with a single woman. Her foray into the upper class (because of her husband’s rise in social status) has left her slightly uncomfortable; yet, the film is much too subtle in representing her comic discomfiture. No hullabaloo, no melodrama! It’s just there for you to see.

Konkana looks awesome; and Ranbir impersonalizes Sid, as if he was born to play this character. Sid’s friends are brilliant too, reminding you often of the not-so-good-looking group of Jaane Tu Yaa Jane Na. It’s not that we have not heard this Wake Up Sid story before. It’s not that we did not anticipate the ending at the very beginning. But you stay on, as if by some emotional compulsion, to see how it all happens. And it happens the right way. As you leave the theatre, the iktara continues to hum in the cores of your heart, and it never seems to stop!

NB: Those who are interested in home décor, please note how Ayesha does up her flat.