To someone way past their own youth, like yours truly, the expectations while entering to watch a film titled Chand Mera Dil, starring GenZ Bollywood heartthrobs Ananya Panday and Lakshya, were uncertain. What I experienced in the 136 minutes of its viewing time took me completely by surprise, which should be to its credit and indeed rare when you compare it with most other romantic movies of the day.
What sets Chand Mera Dil apart from the regular crop of romantic films is that it deals with life and love after marriage, and a baby. With most of the story being told in flashback, the film chronicles the journey of Chandni and Aarav, a young couple in love, their struggle and heartbreak and how life turns out for them in the end. A Dharma Productions film directed by Vivek Soni, it is clearly designed to reach out to young audiences with undefined, filmi and idealised notions about romance and relationships, and perhaps intends to give them a relatable vision of the realities of life, and the responsibilities that come with relationships, before and after marriage.
The story starts off with a sweet and adorable love affair between two engineering students in a college in Hyderabad, and the celebration of young love follows all the usual tropes of romance, complete with a few cheesy dialogues, sparkling song sequences and some fun and exciting moments. But its lighthearted tone is short-lived and the plot soon shifts to shed light on how irresponsible behaviour in relationships can adversely affect studies and career prospects. In doing so, the script brings within its fold several other elements that probably add depth to the backstory and behavioral pattern of its protagonists, but detract from its main themes and unnecessarily complicate the viewing experience.
The story of the young couple who have to get married in a hurry and without their parents’ consent is convoluted with parallel stories about the unhappy, tangled mess that most Indian families are. The audience is informed about the lack of understanding and empathy within Aarav’s seemingly perfect happy family, while Chandni’s memories of domestic violence from her childhood days and her growing up in a loveless atmosphere at home are touched upon more than once. The lack of real love in Indian households stands out as an important problem that Chand Mera Dil is interested to bring out in the open, and is also shown to be the primary reason why the two young people initially get drawn to each other or decide to stay committed.
One of the key issues dealt with in Chand Mera Dil is the real and practical pressures felt by young parents, especially those who are not ready for the responsibility of raising a child. Besides depicting the huge gaps between the expectation and reality of having a baby and taking care of it, it also depicts the conflict between assuming responsibility, and the sacrifice and suffocation of self that comes with being truly responsible. The film also narrates how impulsive decisions in important matters, moments of weakness, or anger issues can prove disastrous in relationships. At the same time, the film explores the stress and anxiety of students for securing top campus placements that become more acute and intense for those who have an added financial burden of caring for a young family. Added to this are the couple’s frustrations and blame games, their failure to seek balance between compatibility and compromise in a marriage, and the hypocrisy of their families, making this a multi-tiered mixture that’s too much to digest.
As two bright students with a promising future ahead of them, Ananya as Chandni and Lakshya as Aarav bring a lot of energy to their performances, lighting up the screen with their presence during the couple’s happy moments. Unfortunately though, their chemistry has no special spark, and the film’s screenplay is mainly responsible for creating some of its beautiful, romantic moments. Though Chandni is impulsive by nature and rightly gives more priority to self-respect than love, Ananya’s lack of emotion in some of her most crucial scenes makes Chandni appear stubborn, unpredictable or even selfish to an extent. Lakshya delivers a more mature, well-rounded act, his intense performance expressing a gamut of feelings like love, joy, jealousy, pain, anger and remorse, while strictly avoiding melodrama.
The audience’s takeaway is a hodge-podge of emotions aroused after watching a film that rehashes old social and relationship concepts to fit into the contemporary era, and of course some stunning views of the modern city of Hyderabad with its swanky IT firms, sprawling college campuses, the magnificent Venkateswara Swamy temple and the massive Buddha statue on the Hussain Sagar Lake.
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