Sanam Teri Kasam is tailor-made made for being subjected to, and failing the Bechdel test; a love story that would be any enlightened woman’s worst nightmare.
Radhika Rao and Vinay Sapru spin a modern, urban fairytale, albeit a gloomy, miserable one, which, in the name of being a woman-centric film, has one of the most feeble, helpless heroines seen in recent Hindi cinema, one who is let down by people around her, her own destiny and herself.
She is the kind who can’t move even a step forward in life without a man for a crutch. The regressive messages come strongly encoded in the story: most men won’t look at you if you are not conventionally beautiful, the man who truly loves you will fathom your beauty despite those thick glasses but you will have to eventually take them off for him as well; and looking pretty is not about feeling good about yourself but attracting a man and getting married to him.
So you have the plain Jane Saraswati “Saru” Parthasarathy (Mawra), who just can’t ensnare a good match for herself. Her conveniently conservative South Indian family doesn’t help much either. The mother weeps into her pallu and stays quiet, the authoritarian father, who would typically say thum for tum (you), insists on an IIM-IIT-Brahmin boy for her but, curiously, doesn’t seem as stern when it comes to the younger daughter Kaveri and her boyfriend. Meanwhile, the spoilt brat Kaveri shouts and screams at Saru because her boyfriend wants marriage and she can’t till the elder sister ties the knot.
And then a Prince Charming Inder (Harshvardhan) comes to aid of Saru. There is a romance which blooms, unknowingly to her, book by book (with notes and dried flowers between pages): from J.D. Salinger’s ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ to Erich Segal’s ‘Love Story’. He sulks, glares and flares his nostrils to let us know that he is much in love with her. That is when he is not fighting his own inner demons by drinking and sleeping precariously on the building terrace. Now it’s the turn of Saru’s father to go on a rampage, declare her dead for the family and even perform her last rites. If this is the kind of ridiculous, hyper family you are saddled with, it’s better to not have one. But sappy Saru will continue to love them. She will tell her mom not to meet her saying “ Woh toot jaayenge ” (Dad will be shattered).
So all that Mawra as Saru has to do is weep, and then weep some more and keep wiping off the tears from her eyes and cheeks with her hands. Also, it would be interesting to watch the film again to see if there’s any sequence or scene where she has not ended up weeping.
Sanam Teri Kasam
Director: Radhika Rao, Vinay Sapru
Starring: Mawra Hocane, Harshvardhan Rane, Manish Chaudhari, Vijay Raaz, Sudesh Berry, Murali Sharma
Run time: 154 mins
