The rover behind the promise wall: About Musafir Cafe and Gen Z dreams finding home

Do our dreams change, or do we? When we alter our dreams for either love of duty, do we call it a change or is it evolution? With the post – millennial generation knocking on the doors of adulthood, dreams are diasporic. The exodus is apparently one of choice but latently triggered by society within one’s psyche. And just when you feel that the life choices have been more than right, and you dream to settle down, you escape not to fly but to bolster your dream; you are reminded of that third space within. Your soul sadly lacks a passport to tell you where your home is! You need a Rahil to deliver a talk about 'Finding Home'.

Musafir Café by Ruchir Arun holds an unamalgamated mirror in front of each character and the viewer, which makes you stand up to face yourself but instead becomes a see – through for the others. This psychological panopticon makes you buckle up your ‘distempered cause’ every time you unbuckle your dungaree and make the first move to make love to your dream. The creator Sharanya Rajgopal pen – pictures the Gen Z where DINK (dual income no kids) is the buzzword and marriage is no more perceived as a legal construct of an agency of rearing children but as merely a choice of modern adulthood. Langston Hughes writes:

Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die

Life is a broken – winged bird

That cannot fly.

As the storyline mentions Pride and Prejudice as Sudha’s (played by Vedika Pinto) favourite novel, it brings to light the irony of having to make a choice in life and the inflexibility of a thudding reality that overshadows the rarely found ideal love – story one would rather not let go of. Interestingly enough, in the same scene there is a mention of Kamleshwar Prasad Saxena’s poetry that highlights the ‘situationship’ between Chander and Sudha. One must not forget that Kamleshwar Prasad pioneered the ‘New Story’ (Nayi Kahani) movement! As an intoxicated Chander (played by Vikrant Messy) shares his utopian dream of the café in Episode 6 where he sees tete – a – tete within an archive of books and where Wi-Fi passwords are denied and passcodes to one’s traumas and mistakes become accessible, one is quickly reminded of the parley between Sudha and Chander where they say: 'I don’t know where we met… Maybe we met in a book.'A millennial might perceive the mention of a book as a Darcy – Elizabeth romance, but a Gen Z would immediately know that this is a ‘situationship’; once you turn over the pages, the chapter will move on to a new one... Or does it? The protagonist duo makes you ruminate: 'Do stories end, or do they just pause?' You are reminded of Sudha’s mom reminding her that someone’s absence has as much an impact on your life as one’s presence does!

For a sensitive, intelligent and poignant man like Chander, being educated in America and having an illustrious career where he is endowed with possibilities of growth, the idea of the Café journalled in his diary entry sounds as impossible as Gonzalo’s idea of commonwealth. It appears to be just another story of a dream dead under a lampshade amidst the jarring floodlights of a chasing city. But as the story unfolds we, like Rahil, realise that while we just dream of it, Chander serves his dream on a platter!

Chander, like Ruskin Bond, wants to narrate stories to children in the lap of hills and he mentions: “That’s my truth.” The utopian dream transforms from a mere blueprint into a lived reality with Preeti (played by Mahima Makwana) by Chander's side, as Mark remarks that if Chander is the root of the café, Preeti is the soul and spirit that keeps it going. Rahil throughout the narrative remains that mirror of conscience and his equation with Preeti is a perfect narrative foil. When Rahil expresses his denial to encounter his follies, Preeti mentions that each one of them is beautiful. The scene projects itself into the culmination in Episode 8 when Sudha realises and feels burdened by Chander’s compromise which she either does not deserve or can never possibly live up to.

Rahil and Chander remain the Hamlet – Horatio duo in the narrative, possibly triggering Preeti to write on her social media update that while one ‘Musafir’ trudges forward to explore the world, another seeks out to settle and find a home. The only change that Sudha makes in Chander’s journalling of the blueprint of the café is the name! As she strikes the word ‘Dream’ out and alters it to 'Musafir Café', Sudha also sets his dreams out into being perennially diasporic, that would find fruition but possibly never find a home. Preeti, the beholder of his dreams, sharply questions Sudha about the café once they meet: 'Is this how you imagined it?'. Sudha’s reply: 'Much much better!' reinstates her former claim that dreams do not only change, but they also evolve!

The mountains become no less than a major character in the narrative frame, its choronotopic relevance is reiterated not only within the narrative scopus but also its metaphorical ubiquity. When Chander points out that while in the metropolitan city we keep chasing, in the hills: 'existing is sufficient'; besides manifesting how hills are epiphanic (pahaar isaan ko asli jagah dikhata hai), he also iterates how his existence amidst it cohabits with his rover – like heart that seeks a closure. Much like the promise wall in the Café, his half – baked promises keep flexing back and interjecting his reality and Nilima’s ring never comes out of the pockets of his overcoat to reach Preeti’s fingers.

Preeti’s acceptance stands astound in the face of Sudha’s free – will. She is aware of the free access in and out of Chander’s life and her visits to Mussoorie is also a visit to that emotional space where she finds a home. When they take a stroll down the hill towards the end of the Season, the camerawork and its focus on the hands keep the viewer glued to the realisation of the proxemics that throbs to hold the hands but restricts to a superficial discussion about climate change. The social distance while they walk or sit at the cliff paradoxically unravels, instead of camouflaging, the emotional recluse one seeks in another and the subtlety of exploring such private instincts with impeccable precision deserves an applause. Preeti, the owner and caregiver of Artist’s Residency, on the other hand, never becomes a resident in that space. She remains a Musafir in the café. The cliffhanger at the end keeps the viewers all the more insatiate, craving for Preeti’s poetic justice and in a way reminds the viewers that the story is not over, it is just a mere pause!