Esha and Hrithik write letters and fall head-over-heels in love in this charming fantasy.

'Na Tum Jaano Na Hum'

The Plot

Pen pals Esha (Esha Deol) and Rahul (Hrithik Roshan) fall in love over the course of their letters. As they've decided to be anonymous, to get to know the other without the physical trappings, they do not make the connection even while working together. Things become really messy when Esha's marriage is arranged with Akshay (Saif Ali Khan), Rahul's best friend.

The Review

As Jaspinder Narula's plaintive 'Yeh Betiyaan to Babul ki Raniyaan Hai' fills the soundtrack over the opening credits, the visuals are black-and-white home movies of Esha Deol in real life. She literally grows up before your eyes, from a chubby kid to the sprightly youngster studying in Simla in the actual film.

Seeing this evocative introduction, I wished that Esha had debuted with 'Na Tum Jaano Na Hum'. 'Koi Mere Dil Se Pooche' wasn't awful, but it lacked that special something needed when a star kid is being launched. Here, Esha plays her age in a character that fits her like a glove.

She's hesitant about believing in God without proof. Yet, looking at family pictures, she asks why God shows you everyone at birth but the one who will become your life partner. She's equally at home shaking a leg at the disco as she is aping the seventies' 'Jat Yamla Pagla Diwana' Dharmendra (an inside joke?).

She's the Indian youth you're more likely to find than the ultra-Westernised denizens of 'Dil Chahta Hai', and Esha does a wonderful job of putting across this bundle of contradictions. Her family is cannily cast with familiar faces like Moushumi Chatterjee, Rati Agnihotri and Alok Nath (who's become the ever-dependable Om Prakash of this generation), and you strike an instant rapport with these folks.

Then Hrithik joins this party, not as the solo, self-absorbed hero showcased in 'Aap Mujhe Achche Lagne Lage', but more along the lines of the winning team player we saw in 'K3G'. Sly digs at his good looks notwithstanding (he's a photographer and as he shoots other faces, he realizes that he himself is being photographed), he sends the romance-o-meter through the roof, whether it's whispering confessions ('main sapnay bahut dekhta hoon') or belting out anguish ('agar tum meri khamoshi nahin samajh sakti to mere baat kaisi samjhogi?').

The Esha-Hrithik pair is terrific, and Saif, in full post-'Dil Chahta Hai' career revival mode, contributes a warm, funny third angle as a girl-crazy dude. Their trials and tribulations are set to some melodious, if not exactly chartbusting, numbers by Rajesh Roshan, who's used fresh singers like Pamela Jain and Sneha Pant to good effect. (The lifeless Kamal Khan could've been avoided, but let's not get too picky!)

These songs are staged very well -- a model plane that Rahul gifts Esha as a token of love later turns life-size and burns and crashes -- and, as with the rest of the film, captured in the extremely imaginative compositions of cinematographer Manoj Soni, running the gamut from full-throttle colour to the desaturated and monochrome.

All of this -- the performances, the technical aspects -- is put in service of a really wonderful screenplay by first-time writer-director Arjun Sablok.

I enjoyed the creative character introductions, how, for instance, innocent shots of Esha and her cousins cavorting about in their pajamas suddenly give way to images of Akshay with scantily-clad women. I also liked the way events are spanned out, taking their time, like when Akshay proposes to Esha and we don't see her response until much later, and how the significance of a shirt that Akshay borrows from Rahul is revealed when you least expect it. Even the mandatory pre-interval twist is beautifully worked in.

Sablok understands the need for big mushy moments, but adeptly stages them in understated fashion. The instant that Esha and Rahul look at the moon and sigh, thinking of their unknown loves while standing right next to each other, is a perfect example. In another display of sweet longing, the duo simultaneously reaches for the volume control when their favourite song (the RDB-Lata-Kishore evergreen from 'Rocky', 'Kya Yehi Pyaar Hai', itself an ode to rapture) plays on the radio.

There's also some corny humour, during a shoot supervised by an E.V.E.R. Reddy. And I couldn't help chuckling at the way this sequence is slyly shot like one of the typical alpine duets, as if Sablok was pressured into incorporating such a picturization but somehow found a creative context for it.

Sablok comes across as the freshest talent since Farhan Akhtar, but arguably more pertinent to our cinema due to his not-as-Westernised flavour. Even if the content here is nowhere as groundbreaking as in 'Dil Chahta Hai' (and even if things do get a tad soggy and protracted towards the end), there's a similar attention to detail with characters (charming vignettes of Esha and Rahul discussing their fondness for chocolate milk shakes and 'baarish') and technology (fancy trimmings like the dissolves to white and blue).

Ultimately, Sablok's triumph is in taking an age-old formula (add one part 'pyaar', two helpings of 'dosti', a dash of 'tyaag' and stir) and presenting it in a way that makes you forget its innumerable precedents like 'Sangam', despite the latter's 'Yeh Mera Prem Patra Padhkar' practically presaging the love letter theme of this film.

The Rating

If the idea of a romance via letters in this age of emails seems foolish to you, stay away. For the rest of us, 'Na Tum Jaano Na Hum' is a perfect fairy tale, a happy reassurance that mainstream cinema can still flourish within its rigid parameters.

Baradwaj Rangan

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