Antaheen – The Endless Wait

First of all, I went and watched Antaheen since one of the anonymous readers of this blog had asked me to do so. And I am glad that I did. Antaheen was as beautiful as a sonata on a lazy Sunday afternoon. In the daily rush of life in Mumbai, I had forgotten what it was to pause and look at the clouds in the horizon, lie on the bed on a Sunday Afternoon with nothing but Eleven Minutes to read. Antaheen on a Friday Night reminded me of how life was in Calcutta. What it meant to take life as it comes. It reminded me not to get upset with relatives who do not understand why so much of my time is spent in office. It’s difficult for Calcutta or Chennai to figure out why Mumbai never sleeps.

After a long time, a director took enough time to develop the characters, bit by bit, painting the various shades of their existence making the observant watcher appreciate how each one of the characters differed from others, how they had come to be what they are. And there lay its flaw. To the regular crowd who expects a Fast and the Furious on a Friday evening, you can not dish out a story about an endless wait. Even the music, which seemed to wrench out the carefully closeted pain from within your heart, will never be played out in any night club across the country, perhaps not even in any radio station.

Beautifully written, Antaheen was about two individuals who in real life do not see eye to eye and yet in their virtual selves they find comfort in each other. It’s a story about two people who drifted away and yet could not severe the last line that attached them and held them together, yet far apart. It’s about an individual trying to come in terms with his guilt and slowly letting himself go into ruthlessness. It’s about an individual who waited all her life for a promise that never was.

The reason I loved the movie was because it showed the importance of space if you want two people to develop to grow. It was satisfying to get a refreshingly different view on the distinction between being a loner and loneliness. Not everyone can handle loneliness as not everyone can love the company of oneself.

Antaheen brought back that feeling you can get only on a laid back winter afternoon in Calcutta, beautiful music floating in through the windows from the house of the old gentleman who never speaks to anyone.

But Antaheen was irritating in terms of Product Placements. It destroyed the flow of the movie at several points where corporate India shamelessly proclaimed its products.

So in the end whoever you were who suggested the movie to me, Thank you.