Lafangey Parindey (LP) is a love story, a tender and shimmering look at an improbable love in the slums between a free-wheeling boxer and wannabe roller-skating spitfire gone blind.
Deepika Padukone gives to the tale the kind of fluent grace and eloquent spin that the audience associates with the female legends of celluloid into what’s unarguably one of the best-written female characters in recent times.
When Pinky goes blind all of a sudden, she doesn’t flutter her eyelashes and trip over furniture like any self-respecting blind diva in our cinema would. She quickly picks up the pieces of her shattered life, and yes, also the rollerskates, and leaves home to a sniggering brother’s taunt and a concerned mother’s encouragement to renew her dreams.
The above is one of the many finely-written and worded sequences in this film, suffused with a delicate charm and infinite wisdom.
Neil Nitin Mukesh has a tough thankless role. Not only is he that archetype known as the ‘Supportive Lover’ in the script, he must also move back in every other sequence to let Deepika walk away with the best expressions and dialogues. Neil never over-steps his boundaries. As the shy fighter who needs the blinded sports-girl’s clairvoyant spirit to take him on the road to love more than she needs him to cross that traffic-laden road which she can’t see, Neil gets the lower notes in the scale of the love symphony right.
While the two protagonists’ journey into love via a dance contest (‘Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi’ revisited) takes centrestage in Pradeep Sarkar’s deftly-cut material, the peripheral characters also get enough space to have their say aggressively without getting hysterical.
A film set in the ghetto is bound to remind the audience of Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire and Vishal Bhardwaj’s Kaminey. Sarkar dodges both and goes for the most unexpected reference points, namely Douglas Sirk’s The Magnificent Obsession and its desi spinoff Gulzar’s Kinara. As in Kinara, the hero is on a redemptive route, taking the blinded girl through the corridors to her dream. It’s a journey undertaken with great warmth, tenderness and loving care.
The dialogues convey a streetside sauciness without getting abusive. Street wisdom need not be eeks-rated.
But hang on. LP is not soft at the edges. Pradeep Sarkar brings to the storyboard a gritty edge-of-the-street desperation that miraculously accommodates a very supple love story. In a moment that can only be defined as tragic-comic, one of the hero’s friends walks away with one of the most expressive lines in this film. After Pinky goes blind the friend says, “Ek minute mein Hema Malini se Thenga Malini ban gayi.”
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The reference to Hema Malini is not lost in a film that takes Gulzar’s Kinara to another shore.
The scenes are written by Gopi Puthran with utmost concern for a pitch that conveys high passion without toppling over. Deepika looking into the sky with a lovelorn look in her unseeing eyes asking Neil to describe the moon is a moment that is priceless and poignant. Cinematographer C. Natarajan Subramanian shoots with loving care. LP is an inspirational tale told with as little fuss and as much feeling as cinematically possible. Neil Nitin Mukesh, in the best performance of his career so far, played a character named One-Shot Nandu in Pradeep Sarkar’s Lafangey Parindey, which turned 14 on August 20.
Neil looks back fondly on the film, “Wow!! It’s been that long? Have the most beautiful memories making one of my most iconic films ever. One wish unfortunately will remain a dream, of working with Pradeep Dada again. Miss him, his infectious energy and childlike quality on the sets. As I speak to you, I have a smile on my face remembering my fantastic co-actors, technicians and of course the leading lady, Deepika Padukone. We all had a great time making this film. I will always be grateful to my producer Mr. Aditya Chopra for giving me the opportunity of being a part of Lafangey Parindey. Magar ……. pandrah saal ka vanvaas pura hua. YRF ab toh waapis bula lo!”
Neil remembers how the late Pradeep Sarkar brought out the best in the actor. “Dada was fiercely creative and a perfectionist. His attention to detail is unparalleled even to date. This was the film where I had to do my first screen kiss. I was very nervous and I had in fact refused to do the scene. Earlier also in Johnny Gaddar I had refused to kiss during an intimate sequence. Deepika Padukone had done a kissing scene on screen. I was a virgin kisser on camera. Pradeepda had to use every possible power of persuasion before I agreed. He first suggested a peck. But I was finally persuaded to do a long, torrid smooch. If I seemed comfortable doing it, Pradeepda was responsible. He could make any actor do anything.”
