After the masochistic violence of
Animal and the soot-laden grandeur of
Salaar: Part 1—Ceasefire comes a film that hits right at home.
Kho Gaye Hum Kahan tries to scratch the shiny surface of social media, the most potent addiction of our time, to reveal the all-consuming darkness that looms large right behind the ring lights.
Directed by debutant filmmaker Arjun Varain Singh, it revolves around three childhood best friends Imaad Ali (Siddhant Chaturvedi), Ahana Singh (Ananya Panday), and Neil Pereira (Adarsh Gourav), who have been inseparable since boarding school. However, don’t make too much of their last names, because the film sure doesn’t. It’s just a classic, superficial check on the diversity list, a trite trope that is slowly becoming the trademark of Excel and Tiger Baby films.
Ahana is an MBA graduate disillusioned with the corporate rut. Imaad is a stand-up comic, a sex addict we’re told, with intimacy issues who is trying to find his voice, and Neil is a personal fitness trainer desperate to break free from his middle-class background. Though set in upscale Mumbai (read Bandra), they could have been anyone living anywhere, such is the homogeneity of their innate urbaneness and their struggle for validation in the digital world.
But written by Zoya Akhtar, Arjun Varain Singh, Reema Kagti, and Yash Sahai, Kho Gaye Hum Kahan is one of the first Hindi films to get the grammar and the syntax of being online right. In its 134-minute runtime, several scenes, details, and observations stand out. For instance, there’s one in which Ahana is trying to focus on preparing a pitch for investors to fund the gym that she, Imaad, and Neil want to start together. She’s just shared a post on Instagram and put her phone in the drawer to avoid distraction. But it just won’t stop buzzing. She fidgets and resists the temptation to check for a long five seconds before giving in. The film also takes a good look at the messy bubble of influencers, the ugliness of online stalking, doomscrolling, shitposting, and the making of a troll.
The real victory of
Kho Gaye Hum Kahan is its casting. Irrespective of their disparate positions and worldviews in real life, Panday, Chaturvedi, and Gourav’s on-screen chemistry feels so lived-in, it flows. Ahead of the movie’s release, I was a little nervous for Panday but her performance in the film alongside actors as skilled as Gourav and Chaturvedi proves that
Gehraiyaan was no fluke and that there is more to her than she lets on. The two men are as solid as always but Panday is the real revelation here.
I also like how there is not an iota of sexual tension between the lead trio. The film explores the comfortable, platonic dynamic between friends that cuts seamlessly across genders, a reality that has been and continues to be the experience of a large segment of urban millennials and GenZ. Ahana, Imaad, and Neil are like pyjamas or daal chawal for each other. They might post pictures of themselves in fineries at up-scale pubs, but they always return home to each other. The Hindi film buddy trio finally has a woman in it. It’s such a welcome upgrade to the erstwhile all-boys club of Dil Chahta Hai (2001) and Zindagi Milegi Na Dobara (2011).
But standard Tiger Baby problems persist.
Kho Gaye Hum Kahan is brimming to the full with platitudes. All the conflicts are neatly packaged and airbrushed to perfection, allowing little room for the chaos that is real life. Moreover, it tries too hard to be cool and current; you’ll find all the tropes and threads at play. It uses the language right but gets the currency wrong. It also pigeonholes the wonderful
Kalki Koechlin yet again, making her play a variation of her roles in
Made in Heaven (2019-), Gully Boy (2019), and ZNMD. And finally, it doesn’t forget to use the favourite weapon in
Zoya Akhtar’s arsenal—voiceover for moral posturing. The film spells out everything and drills it down, for it fears its own cleverness. What if you don’t get it?
