Spoilers for the film ahead
The film has got its lahaar, (waves) man! Gehraiyaan is all real, dealing with real infidelity. Alisha, played by Deepika Padukone, holds the title, specialising in the act of ‘moving on, and emerging from the things falling apart.’
She is a woman who falls prey to an unquenched desire to be loved but then emerges as a strong personality at the end just because she holds on to herself. Her love for Zain, played by Siddhant Chaturvedi, is somewhat real, but her desire to live is greater as she works her way through his accidental death.
Alisha depicts modern life in all its realness, and here comes Deepika’s outstanding acting as a cherry on top. Gehraiyaan keeps Alisha’s story out front, but it also gets through the layers of pretence and materialistic goals. These strike a chord with the modern man, where surviving is all about death-in-life existence.
The pretended fake realities of love, peace and harmony is ditched in the movie to depict the “fucked up” condition of modern existence, where true love comes to a few counted beings. The irony shows itself when Alisha, a yoga instructor, takes regular anxiety pills to be anxiety-free.
Tia’s relationship with Alisha is wrought with family casualties and bears the burden of weighing oneself against another. Unfortunately, Karan, played by Dhairya Karwa and Tia, played by Ananya Panday, do not get much screen time. Still, they play a significant role in shaping the Alisha-Zain “fling” that ends in catastrophe.
After all, it’s all about the timing, and it’s all about how we forget the things we already have in our thirst for a utopian ‘better life’ and utopic ‘time perfections’. Gehraiyaan is an artful depiction of the modern realities we live in and breathe in as we “prepare a face to meet the faces that” we “meet”.
“Lahaar lahaar dono ka dil besabar.” (Waves, waves, our hearts are restless)