A Tale of Young Love in Two Cities

Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat

Cast: Alaya F, Karan Malhotra, Vicky Kaushal 

Direction: Anurag Kashyap

Rating: ***

There’s a very peculiar kind of love that hits the young. 

It is always needlessly intense and accompanied by gut-wrenching urgency. Young, first-time lovers are clingy and voluntarily carry around a deep desire to be intimate. They are also stubborn in their belief that there is no life without the one they love.

Some shayar types have called this young love, “pehla nasha, pehla khumar.” First intoxication, first hangover. 

There’s a sense of innocence and purity to first love that lingers as an endearing memory when we grow older, but also feels stupid and hopeless. 

Anurag Kashyap, the writer-director who usually lurks in dark, claustrophobic spaces in our cities, minds and souls, has this time decided to brighten things up with not one, but two stories that are about young love, almost.

Kashyap is of the age when young love should feel distant and silly. But since he was keen to make a film about it, he says he had to engage the expertise of his young daughter and her friends to access the right emotion, feelings and lingo to create Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat. 

His film, which stars two sparkly young actors – Alaya F and Karan Mehta – has the dewy freshness of Kumar Gaurav-Vijayta Pandit’s Love Story, Rishi Kapoor-Dimple Kapadia’s Bobby, and Sunny Deol-Amrita Singh’s Betaab. But because it’s almost pyaar, the film’s first half dwells in that brief phase when the young are trying to figure out their feelings, when uttering those three words, “I love you,” feels so damn heavy and final. 

The second half of the film plays out as all love stories do. Except that here the villain is not just a rich daddy, but the general and specific intolerance of our times. 

Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat, which has been in the making for the last four years, lays bare all sorts of biases and prejudices that threaten love, but it also throws at us some lyrical love lessons through DJ Mohabbat, played very nicely by Vicky Kaushal who seems to be the only sensible adult around. 

Almost Pyaar… is set in two countries involving different sets of people with similar problems.

In Himachal, there’s Yakub (Karan Mehta) and Amrita (Alaya F), and in London there’s Harmeet (Karan Mehta) and Ayesha (Alaya F).

One is Muslim, the other is Hindu. One is Pakistani, the other is Indian. One has a billionaire father, the other has a gay dad.

Amrita and Yakub live in the same colony in Himachal. He sells DVDs and tries to talk to her. She likes talking to him, but is worried about her burly brothers who are the angry guardians of their khandaan ki izzat.

In London, Ayesha frequents a nightclub and likes the quiet, aloof DJ Harmeet. In between tequila shots and puking in the loo, she tries to talk to him. Harmeet doesn’t respond much. He is trying to catch the attention of DJ Mohabbat, whom he admires a lot. 

Amrita loves DJ Mohabbat and Yakub decides to take her to his concert without the consent or knowledge of her family. 

Ayesha, overcome by her desperate need to belong, moves into Harmeet’s house without his knowledge or permission.  

As the film toggles between two cities and two couples, we see young adults circling each other, trying to explore their own feelings. In between, it treats us to DJ Mohabbat’s take on love and lovers. He quotes Gulzar, tells stories, asks questions and repeatedly draws our attention to love.

In both cities, adolescent mistakes become news headlines. There’s love jihad in one, rape of a minor in another. In both cases, the consequences are dire.

The first half of Almost Pyaar… is powered by cuteness and love, but feels a bit all over the place. 

Yakub and Amrita are adorable as they sing, dance and eat noodles. When Amrita feels low, she asks for Yakub’s kandha (shoulder) to rest her heavy head on. And when Ayesha wants to feel like she belongs to someone, she goes shopping in Harmeet’s oversized sweat-shirt.  

In Himachal, we watch Ayesha and Yakub make TingTong videos; in London we watch cool street-dance sequences. 

The film picks up pace, quite literally, after the interval, and comes together. Sharply edited, it feels like it’s in constant, tense motion and hurtling towards something dark.  

I first watched Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat at the Marrakech International Film Festival in November last year, where the film had its premiere. The film’s screening in the city’s iconic square, Jamaa el Fna, was attended by its two leads and the director (who I also interviewed at the festival).

It was a strange setting. The square was crowded and people were screaming, but their connection with the film was nebulous. They were mostly cheering the Bollywood celebrities in their midst – Alaya F, who was dressed in a shimmering Barbie-goes-to-the-autumn-ball type of gown, and good-boy Karan Mehta with his hair gelled back and wearing a smart black suit. 

We watched the film from what was worse than the first row. Our necks were craned up at the massive screen, distracted at times by the crowd and by Alaya F as she stole the occasional drag of her co-star’s e-cigarette. Alaya and Karan, who sat together watching themselves on a large screen, had the comfort and chemistry of new recruits waiting for their confirmation letter. Their excitement and nervousness was similar, shared. 

I didn’t like the film much then. But I really liked it in the second viewing and it left me humming the song, “Mohabbat Se Hi Toh Kranti Aayegi.”  

I liked Almost Pyaar… for its politics, but I liked it more because of its lead pair. 

There’s an awkwardness to the way the film’s lead characters are written and performed. Amrita, Ayesha, Harmeet and Yakub don’t feel like they are fully formed. They are creatures of that phase in life where they have a temperament and traits, but are yet to attain personhood and personality. 

From many angles, Karan Mehta looks like the spitting image of a younger Ranveer Singh, but with a pout. He plays two very different archetypes here. 

Yakub is the golden-hearted village fool who has a strange hee-haw type of laughter and a hairdo that seems like it’s been nurtured and irrigated since Salman Khan’s 2003 hit, Tere Naam. Harmeet, on the other hand, is a suave, new-gen Germany-born boy who is sullen but devoted to becoming a DJ. 

Mehta plays both very well, and is able to carry in his face and body an intensity and jhallapan that’s endearing.

Alaya F is gorgeous and very talented. As the film progresses, it feels like she too grows up with it. There are several scenes where she has to hold and carry the film on her own, and she does that beautifully.  

Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat marks the arrival of two very promising young actors whose screen presence has that elusive thing called star quality.