Raw Impressions of "Saiyaara"

Spoiler Alert: There is only one plot element that qualifies as a twist. This essay will reveal it. You have been warned!

At some point early in Saiyaara, Vaani Batra, the introverted writer and lyricist, is trying to pen a song for the hugely talented but raw and raging singer-composer, Krish Kapoor. They are sitting in a soundproof studio, Krish's bandmate and funder KV has rented the studio at a rate of Rs. 3,000/- plus taxes per hour. Vaani is just not able to get the words. She complains that she cannot imagine the lyrics in the sterile silence. He starts loud music, she complains that the music hinders her even more. Eventually, she blurts out the recipe for her creative output; she has to get the words that, when put to music, invoke in each listener moments from her childhood, memories of his first love, flashes from a great friendship. That's the magic of a poem, that's the secret sauce of great lyrics. I am paraphrasing here, I didn't jot down the dialogue, but that's the gist of her writing philosophy. It is intensely personal, and it is nothing but personal.

 At various points in the movie, the words and actions of the lead characters magnify this theme—love, longing, and loss give rise to great writing and great music; great writing and great music, in turn, evoke love, longing, and loss.

 Both Vaani and Krish are tortured geniuses—she was an introvert deeply in love, she kept churning out great poetry, but eventually got dumped by her fiance on her wedding day; he is a hugely talented composer and singer shackled by the responsibility of looking after his alcoholic widower father. Krish resents his father, abhors the responsibility of looking after him, and frequently lashes out at the world which is quite willing to equate his lack of clout and lack of money with lack of talent. Vaani's fiance unceremoniously rejects her in favour of a heiress. The marriage not only lands him a very lucrative promotion but also guarantees corporate ownership in the near future. The rejection shatters Vaani and acts as a dead end for her creativity.

 Circumstances bring them together, and each one starts acting as a muse for the other. Vaani's poetry blossoms again, she starts opening up in Krish's company; her influence enables him to channel his enormous talent. As things start looking up for the young couple, Vaani is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease (henceforth AD). And that marks a huge turning point for both Vaani and Krish. Krish is forced to leave behind his self-centred brat persona, and explore the caring, nourishing aspects of his personality.

Genocide, Exploitation, Creativity... 

Before we move on to the struggles of Vaani and Krish to retain the semblance of a normal life and pursue their combined career in the face of Vaani's gradual loss of memory, I want to talk about the movie's take on creativity, and its portrayal of great writing and music. This is the year 2025. In fact, more than half of 2025 is behind us. We are nearing completion of two years of the ongoing genocide of Palestinians by the state of Israel. A genocide that is the culmination of a decades-long apartheid policy, the culmination of relentless persecution that formally started with the 1948 Nakba. A genocide that has been actively aided and abetted by the American empire and its satellites. A genocide that has been livestreamed by the perpetrators themselves. A genocide that has involved targeted killing of medical professionals and journalists, deliberate starvation of an entire population, and "hunting" of starving people desperately seeking food... 

 I know some people will label me a curmudgeon or a killjoy but I cannot isolate any experience today from the ongoing genocide. This genocide has brought about unprecedented waves of movements—by workers, by farmers, by University students, by artists and writers—in support of Palestine liberation, and against Israel and its backers. Look at only a few examples from the musical world, the focus of Saiyaara, and you realize this is the microcosm of a world boiling. Kneecap, the Irish hiphop trio, are being relentlessly persecuted for their pro-Palestine and anti-Israel stance. When the effort to ban them from performing at the Glastonbury festival in June 2025 failed, the BBC decided to not broadcast their performance. Then the BBC was caught blinking when the punk duo Bob Vylan, who were being broadcast, led the audience with chants of "Death to the IDF". Now it is the turn of Bob Vylan to be persecuted and prosecuted by the British and other Western establishments. Meanwhile, the band, Massive Attack, has announced an alliance of musicians speaking out over Gaza and the rest of Palestine. 

 And the music itself—the lyrics, the composition, the performance—is reflecting the fear, the anguish, and the rage. And this isn't limited to the impunity enjoyed by the genocide-mongers, the emotions extend to the exploitation of the working classes across the world. As just one example, the latest album of the American band, Dropkick Murphys, is titled "For the People" and begins with “Throughout centuries in every country/ We’ve faced the wrath and felt the pain/ Of the tyrant’s sword or the henchman’s boot/ For another rich man’s gain”. As the music video shows images of everyday people being blindfolded and kidnapped, the lyrics continue: “Who’ll stand with us?/Don’t tell us everything is fine/Who’ll stand with us?/Because this treatment is a crime”.

 This present affairs recap highlights how much of a churn there is across the world, and specifically, how much of a churn there is among the bands that compose and perform rap, hiphop, rock, jazz, and other genres of music. At one level, Saiyaara is the story of one such band. There is explicit mention of rap, of hiphop, of rock. These are all genres rooted in memories of oppression, exploitation, and discrimination; and in the memories of resistance by the oppressed people. The music itself is a form of resistance. And one doesn't need to look at foreign bands for stories of resistance. Arivu, Dhee, and Santosh Narayanan's 2021 Tamil global hit, Enjoy Enjaami, is a homage to Arivu's grandmother, Valliammal, a landless Dalit indentured labourer with a turbulent past. In the lyricist's own words, the song's intention is NOT "to comfort anyone", but to "disturb". There is Ginni Mahi, a Punjabi Dalit pop singer, who sings of equality and of Dalit pride. There is the Kabir Kala Manch,  a grass-roots performance group formed by working-class youth from low-income Dalit and Bahujan caste communities in Pune in response to the 2002 pogrom in Gujarat. They were targeted by the State for their cultural activism and for their political dissent, and were arrested for a fabricated case around a plot to assassinate the Indian prime minister. Some of them continue to languish in jail, while others have got bail. None of them have got justice. These are just a few examples among countless others. And I am not even talking about the churn among workers and farmers, among writers and other artists, among students, and among all shades of ordinary people.

 So... when you see Saiyaara's protagonist raging against the cards meted out to him by fate, when you notice the shackles of his economic and social condition that restrain him from realizing his musical potential, you expect at least a token acknowledgement that the creativity of an artist or an author is deeply entangled with the material conditions of the society in which the creator is situated. But hell, no; all you get in Saiyaara is preachy platitudes about memories of love and personal angst. 

 Look, I get that Saiyaara is a commercial Hindi movie. The producers and everyone else involved would have wanted it released without trouble or hindrance. So I understand that the movie will not risk the wrath of the Indian state, and of the many many vigilante groups waiting to be offended. The Indian state, helmed by the RSS family, and the Zionist state of Israel, are ideologically aligned, so any mention of the Gaza genocide is out. I get that too. But one doesn't need to look at Gaza. One can find enough rage-inducing injustices in India itself. We know that bulldozers are a new symbol of the State's might, and of the State's wrath. People in some locality dissent against the state, and the next thing you know, their houses are demolished. We know this is the new normal. We routinely see live telecast of demolitions of urban settlements of the poor—there are no advance notices, no alternate housing arrangements, no compensation of any kind. 

 What memories would a song written by a kid from a demolished slum evoke? Would the introverted and sensitive Vaani Batra care for those memories? Obviously not. The movie cannot afford that either—again, I understand the commercial angle. So in the case of Vaani Batra, introversion equals self-absorption and complete indifference to the world around.

 But surely the protagonists can feel and express rage about the injustices they themselves face? Alas—even that is not part of the menu. Forget rage, Vaani doesn't even feel quiet anger at Krish's humiliation by the police, or at his humiliation and exploitation by the representative of the agency that "manages" upcoming and established musicians. None of those incidences enter her poetry, they do not affect it in any way. Neither do they ignite in Krish any creative blaze that wants to burn down the injustices of the world. As a child, Krish had to repeatedly pick up his drunk father from the gutter and get him home. Do those memories leave a mark on his music? No, they don't. Does his music express empathy with children who share his own ordeals as a child? No. Put simply, the two protagonists are deeply self-centred pricks. They have zero awareness of the world around them, and no interest in anything outside of their bubble.

 Naturally, the portrayal of art, of writing, of composing, by these two feels not only pretentious but deeply hypocritical. For a viewer, there is no way to relate to their struggles in creating art, for they never struggle. You do not root for them, because you know their success is guaranteed. 

 And this lack of authenticity seeps into the lyrics and the compositions of the songs. When I heard them, I found the lyrics insipid bullshit pretending to be profound. Now I can hardly remember even a single line of any of the songs. Neither do I remember any of the tunes.

 So much for creativity!

 Let's move on to the second half, to the movie's depiction of an AD patient, and of a willing, loving, nurturing caregiver. 

The stoic patient, the noble caregiver

Just as Vaani's memory lapses increase in frequency and intensity, her ex-fiance, Mahesh, enters the picture as the owner of the event management company that "handles" the performances of Krish's band. The same company also establishes a relationship of dominance vis-a-vis the media house that employs Vaani. Mahesh is a copybook villain—not only is he an opportunist, he is also a sexual predator who, despite being married, tries to get Vaani in bed. In his presence, Vaani completely forgets her life with Krish and only remembers her past romance, and therefore, seems to accept Mahesh's advances. She also starts confusing Krish for Mahesh. As Krish comes to terms with Vaani's irreversible decline, he explores the hidden depths of strength and maturity of his own personality. His determination to care for and love Vaani, no matter the cost to his life and his career, drives the narrative of the movie's second half.

 An autobiographical detour: my mother suffered from dementia for about a decade and a half. (AD is the most common form of dementia.) Similar to Vaani, she would have qualified as a patient of early onset dementia. Her illness was severe in the last half decade of her life. I saw her progression from mild forgetfulness to the stage where she could not remember or recognize any of the people she had known intimately for decades. As a caregiver during the course of her long treatment, I observed and often interacted with her fellow dementia patients, including patients suffering from AD. As a person with caregiving experience, I found Saiyaara's depiction of Vaani's illness unconvincing. It brings into focus the nobility of Krish's personality, which I believe was the primary purpose, but in so doing, it downplays the suffering of both the AD patients and their caregivers.

 What is a person? In his autobiography, Luis Buñuel—the great master of political satires and surreal films—writes:

"You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all, just as an intelligence without the possibility of expression is not really an intelligence. Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing."

Perceptive as ever, Buñuel expresses a profound truth. A man's personality, his identity is shaped and reshaped by his memories. Later in the same chapter, Buñuel declares: "I am the sum of my errors and doubts as well as my certainties". True. But when a man gets dementia, when he starts losing his memories, more and more of the errors and doubts become certainties. And the certainties change from this hour to the next. His personality becomes a fluid, amorphous phantom, shifting shape in response to hazy remembrances and lost memories.

 For you as a caregiver, this phantom personality makes dealing with a loved one as an AD patient a nightmare. You are used to dealing with a well-defined personality. Your responses to him are an instinct, a muscle memory formed over decades. Now you have to erase those instincts. It is not even like dealing with a child—even a toddler has a distinct individual personality, she can discriminate in her behaviour between familiar and unknown people. In contrast, an AD patient is erratic—he takes you for a stranger one moment, a familiar person that's not you at another instant, and actually deals with you as "you" the next moment. In response, you, the caregiver, also has to become a shape-shifting personality, while continuing to deal normally with the rest of the world. You have to do this while remembering to take care of the patient, his needs, his medications. You get no break, the mental and physical stress is relentless. It grinds you down. All this while, you have to suffer the emotional anguish of seeing a loved one turning into a husk of his former self. The person you loved is no longer there, the empty shell that looks like him cannot love you back. At some point, you instinctively become detached and mechanical. That's the only way you remain sane, and retain a bit of your health.

 But the movie doesn't get any of this. I won't go into the details, but essentially, Saiyaara tells the viewer that for a caregiver, a beloved suffering from AD is more or less equivalent to a sane lover saying something hurtful now and then, and being mean or unsentimental, but with a dash of incredible forgetfulness thrown into the mixture. How I wish the movie was right. Reality, unfortunately, is nasty and cruel.

 Could the movie have depicted this differently? I think so. How? I don't know. I don't intend to redo the screenplay.

Miscellany

• Ahaan Panday as Krish Kapoor is excellent. He has the advantage of portraying a person who dominates a lot of scenes, who undergoes a profound transformation over the course of the movie. I found him convincing in the flamboyant scenes in the first half, he doesn't go overboard. And he portrays very well the transformation to a thoughtful and emotionally resilient person in the second half of the movie.
• Aneet Padda as Vaani Batra has a sedate and subdued role, I didn't find her as convincing as her co-actor. Her depiction of an AD patient feels unsatisfactory, but the screenplay deserves as much blame for it as the actor.
• Alam Khan plays well the meatiest supporting role in the movie. Saiyaara has many throwaway touches—a casual dialogue, an exasperated expression, a sigh—that add depth and nuance to Alam Khan’s KV—Krish’s loyal sidekick, his manager, his initial funder, his mop-up man. However, neither Krish nor Vaani ever sense or appreciate the role of this guy in Krish’s stardom (told you those two are self-centred pricks). KV is there when Krish needs him, but he isn’t really in their bubble.
• To me, none of the other actors stood out for bad acting, so they must have been competent, or better.
• Maybe it's just me, but I find bizarre and incongruous the preponderance of lead characters from Punjabi upper caste Hindu backgrounds (Kapoor, Batra, Malhotra, etc.) in the movies produced by the mainstream film producers such as the Chopras, Barjatyas, and Johars. (Interesting aside: among Indian states, Punjab has the highest proportion of Dalits, but you wouldn't suspect this from watching mainstream Hindi movies.) These movies rarely have Punjab as the backdrop, and the Punjabi upper caste Hindu background of the lead characters often has no relevance to the plot. Saiyaara joins the long list of such movies.
• In a reflection of changing times, the movie portrays the physical relationship between the unmarried couple as routine, there's no fuss about it. I found this refreshing.
• The relationship between Vaani's parents and Krish evolves from initial suspicion and mild hostility to genuine care and affection. It feels natural. There are no dramatic flourishes; in fact, there are hardly any words spoken between them. I liked how it was done. 
• The movie begins with a marriage being brutally broken, and ends with a poignant wedding—I wish the movie had resisted the temptation of this symmetric ending. Had it done so, Saiyaara would have lingered in the viewers' memory.