Reality bites

HYDERABAD: Today’s generation of men, raised on the tinsel town romance and dramatics of the nineties, has assimilated almost entirely into the urban workforce. And they are slowly but surely checking off the various Maslow must haves on their checklists --- Roti, Kapda aur Ladki as a recent song points out. The last item on the list, is something they are ill equipped to handle, especially if they are without prior experience. Having grown up watching parents in arranged marriages and pop culture reference points that rarely depict complex women they have no resources to draw from to navigate the course of modern relationships. The beginnings of Pyaar Ka Punchnaama suggest that it could be one the few films that closes this gap in our cultural paradigm. Rajat, Liquid and Vikrant (played by Kartikeya Tiwari, Divyendu Sharma and Rayo Bhakirti respectively) are three friends and roommates living in one of the many apartment complexes in the national capital region dreamed up by real estate developers. Their home is riddled with the detritus of consumerist bachelorhood - leather couches, video games and empty pizza boxes. All three of them are entrenched in the corporate grind with jobs that seem to involve nothing more than typing indented statements into a Visual Basic editor. While their lives seem fine relatively hassle-free, they share a common grievance — that none of them has ever been in a relationship with a woman. This is soon rectified with Rajat meeting Neha, played by Nushrat Barucha, at a karaoke bar. In the ‘sing-off’ that culminates in Rajat and Neha exchanging numbers the boys sing Def Leppard’s ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’ when in reality ‘Love Bites’ may have been a more prescient choice.Liquid and Vikrant find their women where more and more young professionals seem to meet their significant others, at work. With his Latin lothario style Vikrant is at the least able to form the mutual acceptance of a relationship with Rhea (played by Sonali Sehgal). Liquid tones his demeanor down rather uncharacteristically and winds up in the no man’s land that his girl Charu (Ishita Sharma) rather benignly terms ‘friend’. For the rest of the film the three navigate the perceived highs and lows of their relationships completely surrendering any sense of individuality. While the film is a commendable attempt at portraying a uniquely male perspective on the travails of first relationships, it falters in its one-dimensional caricaturing of the women. None of the girls move beyond stand-up comedy caricatures and each of them is presented purely as a manipulative entity.