Within empty frames

I had intended to make an evening of it. Pillows plumped, caramel popcorn at hand—already clinging to my fingers—and a tall glass of cucumber water on the side, as though it would wash away the sugar!

- RENÉE RANCHAN

I was armed, or so I thought, for what promised to be an emotional epic. The film in question was Saiyaara, a July release that, within weeks, had the box office in a tizzy. Five hundred crores and counting, they said! Trade pundits whispered about it like it were the cinematic equivalent of a blood moon. Yes, I definitely thought I ought to see what all the fuss was about. Alas, within the first fifteen minutes, I had washed down the detox water while my fingers were wrestling with popcorn that had hardened into a sticky cement... Saiyaara begins with a young woman, full of dreams, standing on the threshold of her court marriage. A phone call from her fiancé shatters it all: he has decamped to San Francisco, and, worse, has no intention of returning. He is, he announces briskly, marrying someone else. Cue devastation. Cue collapse. Cue mother, father, wringing hands. Our heroine, does not so much recover, as fossilise. For six months she lingers, and here enters that most peculiar of props: The Diary. Patchwork cover, seemingly delicate and fragile, yet indestructible. She writes in it each day, tears pages out, weeps upon it, and it still emerges unscathed, its spine resolutely unbroken. As any writer knows, even the sturdiest notebook buckles after a month of honest use, yet this miraculous volume seems forged in the same factory that manufactures black boxes for aeroplanes. It is, I daresay, the most convincing performance in the film... Enter the hero-though that word feels generous... He is a musician with fists for drumsticks, more inclined to bash heads than tambourines, a bundle of angst and temper tantrums better suited to a sixteen-year-old than a man in his mid-twenties. And yet, he yearns to be number one in the world. Miraculously, our diarist supplies the words, he supplies the noise, and overnight he outstrips Elvis, the Beatles, combined! The two, inevitably, fall in love. Or rather, the script insists they do, because love is signifi