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Be warned!

Time to tear your hair all over again! It all comes back to you – the pointless tiffs between the leads, even more clueless reconciliations, the venomous mom and the hapless dad in the girl’s family and the saccharine folks of the boy’s – it’s all there – unleashed on you with breakneck speed.

To add to the misery is that weather-beaten, done-to-death ploy of Amnesia that once again forms the base of this moth-eaten edifice with scant regard for medical authenticity.

So we open up with Rohan (Raqesh Vashistha) and Muskaan (Aamna Sharif) bickering bitterly on the road. Actually, they are the Laila-Majnu & Heer-Ranjha variety – so we are told in a hurry.

And they are married, too!

The much ado is about Amna’s birthday ‘do’, where someone has been called by Raqesh that Aamna doesn’t like.

The brawl is brought to such a quick crescendo that you wonder whether the next scene would be in a divorce court. But hold your horses – the boil cools before you could say Jack Robinson. They reach home and Aamna finds her room decorated for her birthday by Raqesh (candles and all) and it is back to, ‘Ye tumne mere liye kiya…!’ – pouts & flutters!

So God is in heaven and all is well on earth – you heave!

Wrong again – the tiffs are not an exception, but a rule and it all keeps happening again and again to leave you bewildered as to where it all is heading to?

Soon enough enters Aamna’s mom (Deepshikha) with obvious disdain for Raqesh even after their marriage and the time gone by since then (they’ve even lost a child – it is hinted).

And this ‘child’ thing is what suddenly triggers the final altercation between the two – but is it final? No, silly – what are SMS’s for? He texts a sorry to her and that’s enough for her to scamper to him with a passion that would put Sohni to shame, when she had jumped into a flooded river to meet her Mahiwal.

Like everything else this wheeling of the lovers towards each other is also shot in athriller style – perhaps a compulsion of the makers (Adhikari Brothers), largely known for their thrillers.

They crash into each other!

And now the inanity reaches an unbelievable level with the hospital sequence, which is a paradigm of the ridiculous!

Here, in low angles is introduced Dr Aniruddh, who is the marvel of a Neurosurgeon (played by Aamir Ali, who hardly has the gravitas to carry that out – though, he cannot be faulted for trying).

And now we have the bizarre sight of Deepshikha screaming at Aamir, asking him not to save rogue Raqesh and that too in the presence of all the relatives as well as the hospital staff! Give us a break, guys – for one, the idea itself is macabre and then, the upper- crust doesn’t behave like that in public.

Anyway, the two are wheeled into one Operation theatre and with that one surgeon, even when each passing second is crucial to the two. And then starts the duet... One sinks, the other sinks… Shocks with Defibrillator on the chest for one and then on the other… One’s finger moves, the other’s finger moves… and so on and on with the genius Neuro-surgeon given the typical behaviour often seen in such scenes on the screen – muttering hoarsely, ‘Come on, Come on’, looking heavenwards et al!

The whole sequence looks such a circus!
And it doesn’t end here!

Now comes the coup-de-grace, the final blow to knock us out… for the nth time on our screens Amnesia returns – and that is in a duet, too. Yes – believe it or nuts, both the lovers (?) lose their memories.

We are kayoed – what else!

And now everything happens double, once again – shooting pain in the heads, the ‘Kuchh Yaad Nahin Aata’ cries, the reactions – everything is twice, equally divided between the leads.

The two are stone-dead in reacting to everybody, except each other. That’s how the mention of one triggers headaches in the other. This should be a good sign actually, as slowly but surely it can be used to help retrieve the memories back, but strangely, the Neuro genius declares that they should be immediately separated from each other.

Mom Deepshikha is only too happy to do that and really wishes that her daugher’s memory never comes back so that she stays ‘saved’ from Raqesh.

Now, it takes the mould of something like a Punarjanam story. Time lapses and then one day they meet again only to let loose a fresh load of bickerings on each other. Another strange thing is that the two are normal in their behaviour with all the others, but when it comes to the two of them, some abnormal twitches are triggered in their brains and they start pouncing at each other’s throats.

Etcetera… Etcetera… Etcetera…!

By now, you’ve stopped caring about these two cantankerous creatures. The d�j� vu of what they do in this new turnover in their life isn’t exciting – it is tedious!

Coming to the ones who are impersonating these cardboard characters, Raqesh comes up with a one-note, monotonous performance, much of which is not his fault but that of the mechanical etching of the character. And he doesn’t have it in him to rise above the role and breathe life into the mundane!

The Small Screen-renegade, Big Screen-reject and back-to-square-one Amna Sharif tries to ham her way to glory, but wobbles woefully all through, leaving viewers high & dry The rest just go through their motions, though Deepshikha tries hard to project the obsessive-compulsive tenor of her role, but, once again, is let down by the script and the dialogues. Ayub Khan, as of now, stands totally wasted and comes across as a piece of d�cor at the most.

The less said about the writing the better with the dialogues spouting banalities all around.

Technically, the camera-work is mostly pretty, but doing nothing by way of adding some different dimensions to the visuals. And it is such a futile exercise these days to talk about sound-design etc. in serials, as those are strictly routine, everywhere.

In short, it is nothing more than a recycled pot-pourri of the stereotypical elements of Films & TV in the past, though it could be argued that it is early days, yet. Most certainly yes and even as we hope for some redemption by way of some fresh takes on a love story, the dark fact is that no such intention or prospect is reflected from the initial structure.

Presently, as viewers, we just cannot pledge ‘Honge Juda Na Hum’ to ‘Honge Juda Na Hum’!


- Vierendra Bhargav