In my years of Bollywood watching, I have seen many trailers for Saaya
(2003), and they all end with the same solemn voice asking, “Can true
love bring back the dead?” It’s one of those questions to which the
answer is always no. True love has a very shaky track record in making
people happy, which is its presumed intended purpose; expecting
resurrections is a bit much.
The true love in question is between Akash Bhatnagar (John Abraham) and his wife Maya (Tara Sharma.) The couple are both doctors, and they are very, very, very happy; we know this because after giggly baby talk over the opening credits, the film moves directly into a song about how very, very, very happy they are together.
After the song, we get a caption reading “One Year Later.” In the midst of severe flooding on the border between India and Burma, Akash is desperately trying to contact his wife, who is providing medical aid in the region despite being six months pregnant. He manages a short phone conversation, but soon afterwards her bus meets with a tragic accident and ends up in the river. Several bodies wash up soon afterwards, but Maya’s never does.
Akash deals with his grief by devoting himself to his work. His friends and co-workers are worried about his attitude, especially after he makes a point of sending an attempted suicide to another doctor. (”I don’t want to see patients who themselves don’t wish to live,” he says.) The hospital administration strongly hint that Akash taking a leave of absence would be a good idea for everyone, but he flatly refuses. Instead, he obtains permission to put in time in the Pediatrics unit where Maya used to work.
Meanwhile, strange things start happening around the house. The sound of dripping water wakes Akash up in time to see Maya’s favorite paperweight rolling across the floor. Then he hears her voice, and follows it downstairs only to find that the video projector has turned itself on, and is playing an old conversation the couple had, in which Maya claimed that she would die first, but would return to meet Akash every day. “I’ll never leave you alone,” she says.
The next day Akash tries to discuss the night’s events with sassy platonic gal pal Tanya (Mahima Chaudry), but she doesn’t want to hear it. Years ago, when her love Vinod was killed in an accident, Akash and Maya pulled her back from the brink of dementia and helped her to accept the reality of her loss, and she’s determined to repay the favor whether Akash likes it or not. With a little bit of effort she manages to talk him back into his customary skeptical atheism.
Of course that’s not the end of it. Not only do the hauntings at home continue, but strange things start happening at work. One of Maya’s young patients wakes up after a near-death experience and tells Akash that he has seen Maya in a place filled with light and water, and that she’s trying to contact him. Another patient, one who never met Maya before, soon makes a similar claim, and both boys are constantly drawing the same strange figure, a sort of wavy cross. Naturally Akash wants to find out more, but hospital policy forbids talking to patients about near-death experiences, after that unfortunate business with Sister Martha. Of course, Akash promptly tracks down Sister Martha (Zohra Sehgal). She talks to him about the afterlife, and tells him that if Maya is trying to contact him, she must have a reason.
While Sister Martha doesn’t think that Akash is crazy, it seems everyone else does. He’s become a haunted man in every sense of the word. The strange events at home continue to escalate. He has a very public breakdown at work. Tanya suggests that the only way to help himself is to change jobs, move to a different city, and cut off contact with everyone and every thing that reminds him of Maya, including and especially herself. Akash puts his house on the market (and I really wanted the couple who came to look at it to be played by Ajay Devgan and Urmila Matondkar, but it was not to be.) He tries to pack, but the boxes unpack themselves whenever his back is turned. And it’s then that he discovers just what the strange symbol is, and takes off in search of answers.
There’s a delicate balance that Saaya has to strike, and it strikes it well. On one hand, we are dealing with what is more or less a ghost, as well as a man slowly losing his grip on reality, but on the other hand the ghost is of the man’s beloved wife; she’s trying to contact him out of love rather than vengeance. The supernatural manifestations in Saaya are unsettling but not exactly creepy.
I understand that Saaya is adapted from the Kevin Costner film Dragonfly. I’ve never seen Dragonfly, so I do not know how faithful it is to the source material, but Saaya is a good movie, well written, well acted and well directed. (And Zohra Sehgal is one of my favorite Bollywood supporting actors, so any movie which includes her in the cast gets bonus points.) I will say, and you may never hear me say this about a Bollywood movie ever again, that the film would be better off without the musical numbers. John Abraham does a fine job of establishing that Akash is sad, and we don’t really need a six minute montage of him wandering the house as sad music plays to reinforce the fact. However, while the songs don’t actively add to the film they also do not detract. The movie is good.
The true love in question is between Akash Bhatnagar (John Abraham) and his wife Maya (Tara Sharma.) The couple are both doctors, and they are very, very, very happy; we know this because after giggly baby talk over the opening credits, the film moves directly into a song about how very, very, very happy they are together.
After the song, we get a caption reading “One Year Later.” In the midst of severe flooding on the border between India and Burma, Akash is desperately trying to contact his wife, who is providing medical aid in the region despite being six months pregnant. He manages a short phone conversation, but soon afterwards her bus meets with a tragic accident and ends up in the river. Several bodies wash up soon afterwards, but Maya’s never does.
Akash deals with his grief by devoting himself to his work. His friends and co-workers are worried about his attitude, especially after he makes a point of sending an attempted suicide to another doctor. (”I don’t want to see patients who themselves don’t wish to live,” he says.) The hospital administration strongly hint that Akash taking a leave of absence would be a good idea for everyone, but he flatly refuses. Instead, he obtains permission to put in time in the Pediatrics unit where Maya used to work.
Meanwhile, strange things start happening around the house. The sound of dripping water wakes Akash up in time to see Maya’s favorite paperweight rolling across the floor. Then he hears her voice, and follows it downstairs only to find that the video projector has turned itself on, and is playing an old conversation the couple had, in which Maya claimed that she would die first, but would return to meet Akash every day. “I’ll never leave you alone,” she says.
The next day Akash tries to discuss the night’s events with sassy platonic gal pal Tanya (Mahima Chaudry), but she doesn’t want to hear it. Years ago, when her love Vinod was killed in an accident, Akash and Maya pulled her back from the brink of dementia and helped her to accept the reality of her loss, and she’s determined to repay the favor whether Akash likes it or not. With a little bit of effort she manages to talk him back into his customary skeptical atheism.
Of course that’s not the end of it. Not only do the hauntings at home continue, but strange things start happening at work. One of Maya’s young patients wakes up after a near-death experience and tells Akash that he has seen Maya in a place filled with light and water, and that she’s trying to contact him. Another patient, one who never met Maya before, soon makes a similar claim, and both boys are constantly drawing the same strange figure, a sort of wavy cross. Naturally Akash wants to find out more, but hospital policy forbids talking to patients about near-death experiences, after that unfortunate business with Sister Martha. Of course, Akash promptly tracks down Sister Martha (Zohra Sehgal). She talks to him about the afterlife, and tells him that if Maya is trying to contact him, she must have a reason.
While Sister Martha doesn’t think that Akash is crazy, it seems everyone else does. He’s become a haunted man in every sense of the word. The strange events at home continue to escalate. He has a very public breakdown at work. Tanya suggests that the only way to help himself is to change jobs, move to a different city, and cut off contact with everyone and every thing that reminds him of Maya, including and especially herself. Akash puts his house on the market (and I really wanted the couple who came to look at it to be played by Ajay Devgan and Urmila Matondkar, but it was not to be.) He tries to pack, but the boxes unpack themselves whenever his back is turned. And it’s then that he discovers just what the strange symbol is, and takes off in search of answers.
There’s a delicate balance that Saaya has to strike, and it strikes it well. On one hand, we are dealing with what is more or less a ghost, as well as a man slowly losing his grip on reality, but on the other hand the ghost is of the man’s beloved wife; she’s trying to contact him out of love rather than vengeance. The supernatural manifestations in Saaya are unsettling but not exactly creepy.
I understand that Saaya is adapted from the Kevin Costner film Dragonfly. I’ve never seen Dragonfly, so I do not know how faithful it is to the source material, but Saaya is a good movie, well written, well acted and well directed. (And Zohra Sehgal is one of my favorite Bollywood supporting actors, so any movie which includes her in the cast gets bonus points.) I will say, and you may never hear me say this about a Bollywood movie ever again, that the film would be better off without the musical numbers. John Abraham does a fine job of establishing that Akash is sad, and we don’t really need a six minute montage of him wandering the house as sad music plays to reinforce the fact. However, while the songs don’t actively add to the film they also do not detract. The movie is good.
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