Summer has finally dawned after a very tough examination period for all of us. Me and many of my friends already have plans that we have sorted out, and just before we start waxing voluble on these goals, we ought to take a couple of days to clear our minds and dust aside the school-year anxiety.
For me personally, this aforementioned effort to ward off the post-examination languor and fatigue has led to my endeavoring to explore various cuisines across the city and to watch any new movies being broadcasted in cinemas. One of these movies that I recently had the privilege of watching was Bollywood’s Half Girlfriend, which is based on the best-selling novel with the same title. Regardless of how the movie turned out to be, I am thankful that a Bollywood movie was premiered in a major city in a metropolis that is America.
Riya Somani, a privileged, upper-class girl enters St. Steven’s college, a very prestigious and top-notch place, and immediately makes her mark upon faculty and her peers alike. Meanwhile, Madhav Jha, a country-dwelling, young man hailing from Bihar, struggles to mesh in with the high standards of living that St. Stephen’s holds testament to. Smitten with Riya Somani, Jha has gained entry to the school based on his basketball skills, but as the movies progresses, Jha is exceedingly enchanted with Somani, who seems to be the quintessential, posh and highly privileged Delhi girl—the type that normally springs to mind upon hearing about Delhi.
Yet, shrouded within the façade of Somani’s ostensibly perfect life lies her deepest issue: an incessant grappling with loneliness and solitude. Jha, who is initially made to believe that Somani has all that someone might ever wish for, soon comes to the mesmeric conclusion that Somani too, like others at the college, craves attention and is in a quest for finding someone who she can truly rely on. What makes the movie unique, however, is what this quest leads into, the precise theme which Chetan Bhagat accentuates in his best-selling book as well.
Throughout the course of the movie, Jha and Somani dwell in a relationship that is fluid and equally indefinite both in its dimensions and its dispositions. Their relationship is one that lies in a gray area; while the term “friend” is perhaps too shallow and non-encompassing to describe it, the term “girlfriend” comes across as being overly formal and is therefore inapt to describe what Jha and Somani mean to each other. Theirs is what starts as a one-sided love, but eventually sprouts to fruition when Somani sights what she is in a search for in Jha.
And so it’s born—“Half girlfriend”—the title of the movie. Bhagat suggests that the closest term that describes Jha and Somani’s relationship ought to be “Half girlfriend” because theirs is a relationship that treads somewhere beyond the confines of mere friendship but does not quite have enough fuel to spur to full fruition. Whether Jha and Somani are able to truly unite is something that I must leave unsaid so that you can go and enjoy the movie with your “fully” loved ones in the cinema too.
Either way, I must commend Mohit Suri for his excellent directions and of course Arjun Kapoor for his being able to impeccably pull off a contrived Bihari accent and disposition. It was a pleasure enjoying a much needed afternoon watching a Bollywood movie that definitely strays away from topics that have now become too clichéd to base movies on, and the movie sets a new direction for movies that are to come in the future.