Three of us - an experience

Movies are meant to entertain you. Some of them inspire you, some excite you with novel ideas, some, with new experiences, and then there are some that start living inside you. The drama repeats in your present, emotions work you over, dialogue code and decode poems in you, characters crowd you over and you are totally trapped in the plot. That is happening around my little being these days. Two couples, (or should I say a couple and two passersby?) have captured my time away from routine. By indulging me in their beautiful reunion they are haunting me with questions and seeking my own answers. 

I seem to have forgotten what happened 28 (maybe 30) years ago. Have I? 

The dementia affected Shailaja with Dipankar, her husband took me along with them when they decided to visit her memories in a Konkan town. Memories include a school, her old home, a few friends, and Pradip. A poem unfolds there.

The poem holds me captive now. The streets Shailaja walks through, her old house, her friends, her memories rekindled, all are mine too. And Pradip, is that me?

‘Three of us’ is a movie which is made out as a beautiful poem because it enthrals the romantic in you. It excites you about a platonic relation which transcends material bonding but focuses on memories, and the loss of it. It rekindles your nostalgia in such great measure that you identify with the protagonist in her return to the beginning.  She has come back to her ‘udgam’ (Pradip poetically explains it as the point where waves originate when a stone falls into a lake.) Where do we all belong? At the origin or in present?

A journey backwards, towards the udgam, starts when Shailaja schools Pradip (the embarrassment was mine too) about ‘aap aur tum.’  We used to refer to each other as ‘tu’, she reminds him. The journey concludes (or does it ever?) on the giant wheel where Shailaja tells him about her ailment and tells him that she may not be able to remember this for very long. Pradip in the most endearing way assures her that he will, and then in a moment of acting brilliance wipes our tears from his eyes.

Dipankar looks on enviously as Pradip lights up Shailaja’s nostalgic sojourn. Sarita on her part is happy to acknowledge Shailaja’s boldness to leave back excuses and enjoys a ‘bohot pyaara ajeeb’ in reply to Shailaja’s concern that her coming back to Pradip must be strange for her.

The movie is sure to haunt you with its many a poetic dialogue, the images it leaves you indulged in, an overpowering emotional nostalgia it draws for you, and above all the sterling performances the three of them have delivered. Shefali is at her subtlest best. Jaideep a treat to watch in each of his character nuances, Swanand as Dipankar is at par with better performances.

Watch it, get stuck and fondle it whenever you feel like it.