This year had all Mumbaikars or rather the entire country eagerly waiting for monsoons. What is usually considered as the time of the year when when everyone is stressed about roads clogged with water, travel to office, falling sick with viral fever; had changed into a feeling of much awaited relief.

Considering how much our climate has changed, it almost feels as though very soon, we will not have the luxury to crib about monsoon. The lack of it, has created a devastating situation across the country and it feels criminal to say “rain rain go away, come again another day”. Trust me, little Johnny would like to play in the rains now.

Monsoon is a special time if you’re living in Mumbai. The city slows down its beat, sometimes quite literally, when you find yourself stuck in traffic for hours. Weekends feel like a mini vacation. The chai tastes nicer, warm food feels nourishing, afternoon naps in the dark gloomy weather feel fruitful.

One such weekend activity during monsoon that is so immersive is watching a nice monsoon film. A film that’s as grey as the sky in Mumbai.

I had watched “Raincoat” many years ago and I had loved it then. I wanted to rewatch because I couldn’t remember the story and only remembered loving the film. I found it on YouTube, a decent print.

I made the season’s last bombil fry before we go on a monsoon sea food break. I paired that up with dal and rice. Hot, simple and nourishing. When I started watching the film, the grey clouds outside only helped.

The story is set on a rainy day in Calcutta when Mannu (Ajay Devgan) travels to the city from his town seeking financial help from his friends and family. Mannu is recently laid off from his job and plans to start his own business.

Knowing fully well that his ex-love Neeru (Aishwarya Rai) now lives in Calcutta with her well to do husband in a sprawling bungalow, he decides to pay her a visit.

It’s pouring out in the city, and Mannu, in his beige coloured raincoat, loaned from his friend, alights from the hand-Rikshaw at Neeru’s home on that afternoon. He rings several bells, and hears Neeru’s voice ask who it is as the door. When Mannu answers, she hesitantly opens the door and lets him in. No pleasantries are exchanged, no formal exchanges like “how are you” and “I’m well thank you”. They simply start talking to each other, not too excitedly, almost as though they live together. There’s a sense of comfort between them. The kind that you have with your old friends. The body, expressions and the manner of speaking is not new. It’s the feeling of meeting someone who you have known closely for a long time.

The house looks like an old victorian style bungalow that’s gone rogue now – squeaky furniture, old fixtures, darkened walls and oddly arranged antique showpieces.

Mannu keeps persuading Neeru to switch the lights on so he can see her properly but she refuses to do so then explaining that the electricity must have fused off from the constant rains. She lights a candle, gets a glass of water and the couple begins with speaking about each other’s lives.

Neeru sounds boastful about her comfortable and luxurious life in her Victorian style home. She complains about her husband touring to different countries every week. Mannu is both jealous and happy at the same. He is constantly reminded that he couldn’t give her the life she wanted and probably Neeru decided for the best to marry her husband. Flashes from the past keep scaring Mannu while he talks to Neeru. In return, when asked about his life, Mannu chooses his share of lies. He tells Neeru that he owns a business and is deciding to marry soon.

The pretences continue until Neeru remembers to arrange lunch for Mannu. She borrows Mannu’s Raincoat and dashes out to get some food, telling Mannu to not open the door for any visitor and to stay put until she arrives.

Mannu, in an attempt to open one of the windows, notices a gentleman standing right outside the house. The gentleman makes reasons to enter the house when Mannu allows him to do so. Soon Mannu finds out that the gentleman is no stranger to the house. What unfolds, leaves Mannu shocked. The visitor acquaints Mannu to the real Neeru. To her heartbreaking conditions. As you see Mannu feel the shock and the dread of it all, you feel it all with him too.

Once Neeru comes back home, Mannu carries on with his pretence as though he dosent know anything about Neeru. He never mentions meeting the gentleman.

Soon after Mannu says his final goodbyes and leaves, he’s left with a hint in his Raincoat that makes him wonder if, at once, they had both decided to be honest with each other, would any of this pretence matter? The turmoil that the entire afternoon unfolds so carefully, it’s terrible yet so beautiful to watch.

Large parts of the film are spent inside Neeru’s Calcutta house, with both of them just talking to one another – playing a character. One that best shows how they are living in the present. Call it ego of a long lost love or trying to save each other from their own dark present, the two are constantly seen in a push and pull in their conversation.

I’d edit the film even more and maybe restrict it only to the long scenes played out in the house but I did not mind the backstory, the friend who Mannu stays with, his mom etc., either.

It’s not on something I have to so specifically say but Ajay Devgn and Aishwarya Rai are beautiful in the film. They don’t act. They are just there, existing, in that dark, gloomy, tough world created so carefully by the Director, Rituparno Ghosh.

It’s no surprise that this film is a tearjerker. The kind of love story that’ll not leave you for a while. For days you’d be thinking, what if? What if we created a world where all that love needs, is love, and nothing else? No external circumstances that can break the love?

I cried watching this one and it left me in some sort of a mood that I can’t really explain. Feel this way ever before?

-Aishwarya Bedekar