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The beauty of Musafir Cafe lies in its simplicity and monotonous rhythm. It’s anchored by Vikrant Massey, who plays Chander with an admirable vulnerability and intensity.
Musafir Cafe starring Vikrant Massey, Vedika Pinto and Mahima Makwana is now streaming on Netflix.
Musafir CafeU/A
3.5/5
Starring: Vikrant Massey, Vedika Pinto and Mahima MakwanaDirector: Ruchir ArunPlatform: Netflix
Musafir Cafe Web Series Review: The beauty of Musafir Cafe lies in its simplicity and monotonous rhythm. There’s nothing unpredictable, dramatic or high-stakes about this show. Maybe that’s why it feels like a gush of fresh breeze. The comfort of familiarity – which almost feels like a frayed and faded but beloved blanket – becomes this narrative’s strongest link.
A series themed on romance isn’t really a safe streaming bet. There’s no easy binge-watch hook here. Yearning, chemistry, emotional intimacy and small moments don’t amount to cliff-hangers. And that’s why creator Sharanya Rajgopal and director Ruchir Arun deserve brownie points. Because in times like this, where gore and gunpowder are ruling the roost, love on streaming feels like a bold step.
But don’t mistake Musafir Cafe for a saccharine-coated story about rainbows and star dust that gives butterflies in your belly. This one’s far from that. It explores the messy and unpleasant nuances and complexities of a relationship. It asks you, what happens when you meet the right person at the wrong time. It also questions if true love is always the right kind of love.
Based on Divya Prakash Dubey’s eponymous novel, Musafir Cafe opens with Chander and Preeti running a cafe nestled somewhere in the mountains. While they’re very much in love, there’s more than what meets the eye. Preeti has accepted that a big part of her partner’s heart, who loves her intensely and dotes on her, will always belong to his ex-lover.
The action then moves eight years back to Bhopal. Chander, a young man in his twenties, has recently moved to the city to escape his parents, who are obsessed with getting him married. Even from miles away, they fix up meetings for him with prospective brides. During one such date, he meets Sudha. For him, she’s a girl like no one else.
He quickly learns that she has no intention of getting married, ever. And yet, that one conversation draws them close. Eventually, Sudha moves in with him, and while they promise each other to never cross the line and get emotionally attached and physically intimate, they do as luck would have it. He accepts Sudha with all her quirks. He even lets go of his dreams and ambitions to move with her to Mumbai.
And that’s when all hell breaks loose. Chander’s love and commitment towards her scare Sudha. She isn’t afraid of love but what it might cost. She has built her life around ambition, independence and self-determination. So, when he starts centring his entire life around her, it doesn’t feel romantic but almost claustrophobic to her. So, after a heated emotional exchange, she leaves him.
But eight years later, Sudha suddenly re-enters his life. What he does next after years of heartbreak, failed attempts at reconciliation with her and a lingering lack of closure (with Preeti still very much a part of his life) forms the rest of the story. Musafir Cafe doesn’t make any lofty promises. It makes no grand statements about love, nor does it attempt to reinvent the romance genre.
Instead, it finds beauty in the everyday complexities of relationships, presenting them with honesty, warmth and simplicity. Much like life itself, the story is imperfect and sometimes messy for the sake of it. It occasionally moves at a languid pace. There are moments that will tug at your heartstrings, and then there are some you may struggle to wrap your head around.
And yet, Musafir Cafe leaves an impression, reminding us that the most meaningful love stories are often the ones that feel the most real. In a rather subtle way, it may feel like a homage to love won and lost. At the same time, it touches upon the need for individual independence and agency even within a relationship. This interplay forms the emotional heart of the narrative.
Having said that, there are contrived attempts to make the series something that it’s not. And that’s when the narrative starts sinking in bits and parts. Our protagonist Chander is a cardboard caricature of an Imtiaz Ali hero. Tired and bored of his life in a corporate firm in the USA, he decides to come back home. And then he tries to escape again. He’s always trying to find himself.
Ultimately, it’s the mountains where he discovers himself. His journey to accepting himself by keeping expectations at bay is marred with heartbreaks and emotional scars. At times, the series seems a little too eager to elevate itself, peppering its narrative with references to poets, mountains and philosophical musings that often feel more ornamental than insightful.
But credit lies where it’s due. Musafir Cafe is anchored by Vikrant Massey, who plays Chander with an admirable vulnerability and intensity. During emotional breakdowns, the deep sorrow and anger in his eyes are palpable. He inhabits his character’s endearing awkwardness, longing and emotional fragility with remarkable ease. His shy smiles, fleeting glances and unspoken emotions carry a lot of weight.
Vedika Pinto as Sudha perfectly complements Chander. She has a luminous screen presence and is rather impressive in the emotionally heavier sequences. In the lighter moments, she’s effervescent, uninhibited and irresistibly charming. Her transformation from a free-spirited young woman humbled by emotional dilemmas is rendered with an impressive nuance.
You may not agree with her choices always, and she may even come across as someone deliberately complicating her life and those around her, but it’s her flawed nature that makes her human. Sharanya and Ruchir create these characters with a lot of nuance and intricacies, and that becomes one of the biggest highlights of Musafir Cafe.
Mahima Makwana plays Preeti with a quiet dignity. One may feel that she receives the shorter end of the stick compared to Vikrant and Vedika, but Mahima makes sure that she commands your attention each time she appears in the frame. Speaking of her Preeti, the makers portray her through the lens of rare emotional maturity and sensitivity, giving her an identity beyond ‘the other woman’.
In fact, in a scene in the last episode of the series, Preeti and Sudha meet for the first time. Sitting across each other at a table, they battle a knot of emotions – awkwardness, hesitation, curiosity and resentment, rather silently – without ever allowing them to curdle into bitterness. It’s moments like this that make Musafir Cafe thrive.
And much like love, this eight-episode series remains unresolved and is rarely straightforward, but that’s where the charm lies. It’s warm and fuzzy and achingly real.
About the Author
Titas Chowdhury is a Special Correspondent at News18 Showsha. She writes about cinema, music and gender in cinema. Interviewing actors and filmmakers, writing about latest trends in showbiz and bringi…Read More
