The insights into life in rural India all seem authentic under Kiran Rao’s direction and the ballad-style running commentary set to music has instant appeal. The film shows the significance of the dowry to struggling families, what goes into raising the money to pay it, how the bridegroom’s family depends on it.
Getting to Deepak’s by public transport is a nightmare; we see various modes, culminating in a pivotal overcrowded train journey in the dark, an ideal situation for a bride swap. A mysterious other bride Jaya (Pratibha Ranta) dressed in an orange ghhoonghat veil, just the same as Phool’s, takes advantage of the confusion on the train to go off with Deepak, leaving Phool stranded, stunned, desperately searching for Deepak, penniless, having given her jewellery to him for safe-keeping.
Once home, Deepak is stunned when the veil is lifted to see not Phool but Jaya, while Jaya, who, for her own reasons, has adopted another name, seems unruffled, overly calm. What’s the link between Jaya and the newspaper article Deepak has just missed seeing about bandit brides stealing money and jewellery from new husbands? Why is she behaving so suspiciously? What’s going to happen to Phool, who can’t recall the name of Deepak’s village, except that it’s the same name as a flower?
Don’t be deceived by that brief introduction: the plot is not thin, nor predictable; the young couple, and Jaya, make the mix-up and its unravelling compelling to watch. Meanwhile, Deepak’s family’s crops are failing, the remedy becoming the basis of an interesting subplot.
Sit back and enjoy a film that gathers speed from a slow start and brings in some wonderful characters such as Jaya’s jilted husband, Deepak’s friends, the grandma in charge of a railway station stall selling samosas and a comic policeman who takes bribes, incessantly chewing, delivering his lines through a mouth stuffed full to the brim.
Sneha Desai, Biplab Goswami and Divyanidhi Sharma wrote the Hindi script, with a bit of English for comic effect, capturing the gendered expectations of men, who are brought up to feel entitled to submission from women and to a big dowry in exchange for the so-called privilege of being married. Some women go along with that; for others, another life beckons.
While it doesn’t examine arranged marriages in depth, the film presents both sides, deftly showing how they can work out well, for some but not others. There are plenty of hilarious moments and a satisfying ending.
