An unassertive, diffident young man gets married to a ‘relatively’ assertive young woman in Meenakshi Sundereshwar, the undemanding new movie streaming now on Netflix, and destined to top charts.

There is not much to not like, and equally as little to like in this story of a couple who are arrange-married by a stroke of karma and a lack of directional skills.

Sunder’s family get their directions wrong enroute to an eligible girl’s house to fix his marriage, and end up at Meenakshi’s house who are expecting a different suitor and his family. A little awkward and neither family confirming the obvious — i.e. who exactly they’re visiting — Meenakshi and Sunder are left alone to hit it off… and they do.

Sort of.

On the night of their wedding, before things pick up steam, Sunder gets an offer to develop a software from the ground-up as an intern at a software company that only hires candidates for a year after a cut-throat and kitschy selection process.

The catch is, as per company policy, married candidates — or even those who are attached to families — are looked down on. So, Sunder, who had been talked-down by his slightly overbearing father for not joining the family’s sari business — and to whom he has to prove himself — lies about being single. He also has to shift to Bangalore for a year, which introduces the dilemma of long-distance communication and romance for the young couple. Predictably Meenakshi, whose in-laws are moderately modern and relatively cool about things, faces one or two hitches on the family front.

By now, avid reader, you may have noticed a recurring observation: the oft-use of ‘relatively’, ‘moderately’, ‘undemanding’, ‘sort of’. Things are not that drastic or dramatic for either Sunder or Meenakshi. Their problems aren’t anything a good conversation might resolve; the fact is evident to even the elder in the movie who suggests this very thing.

The story harks back to a time in the 1960s and the ’70s when simple, low-budget independent movies that often starred Amol Palekar or Sacchin were made in Bollywood. But those movies stayed in your memory.

Produced by Karan Johar and starring Abhimanyu Dassani (son of actress Bhagyashree) and Sanya Malhotra, this is a meek little movie like its key characters, with a meek little plot. At nearly two-and-a-half hours’ length it’s a little too long and its climax feels a bit too rushed, and there are more than a handful of missed opportunities storytelling-wise, but still it’s far better than other recent entries in the genre.

Published in Dawn, ICON, November 14th, 2021