Taj Mahal 1989

[Rhoda Siket]

TajMahal 1989 is an Indian comedy drama romance television series directed and written by Pushpendra Nath Misra. The series stars Neeraj Kabi, Geetanjali Kulkarni, Sheeba Chaddha and Danish Husain. It is set in Lucknow in 1989 India and revolves around characters with different takes on love.[1][2] It was released on Netflix on 14 February 2020.[3]

Lucknow, 1989. A pre-Internet age, where finding love was difficult, but sustaining it, even more so. Taj Mahal 1989 follows the intersecting lives of a Lucknow University professor couple, their students, a long-lost friend and his lover, and a schoolgirl in love with an older boy. Through the daily struggles and triumphs of the characters, the series explores the different shades of love over the ages as it mutates and matures.

Shontu, with Angad's help, is able to impress Mamta. She nominates him as the presidential candidate from her Communist party for the university elections. When sparks fly between Angad and Mamta after they have a heated debate, Angad is forced to rethink his decision to help Shontu. Mumtaz gets into a public argument, and is humiliated; Sudhakar tries to comfort her. Meanwhile, the tension between Akhtar and Sarita reaches a boiling point, resulting in an explosive fight.

Shontu is kidnapped, resulting in panic at the University. Over the days, Mamta steps up as presidential candidate, while Sarita and Akhtar decide to finalize their divorce after returning from a honeymoon in Agra. Seeing Mamta's rise in popularity, Dharam takes his goons along with him to threaten her into backing down. Sudhakar rushes to the hospital to meet an injured Mumtaz, and the two make a decision regarding their future.

Dharam's obsession with power causes his relationships to fall apart, and even angers Babbu Bhaiya. Desperate to regain favour with him, Dharam agrees to help Sunaina run away with Shalin. Rashmi realizes she is in love with Angad and decides to confess. Sarita and Akhtar spend quality time in Agra, but the impending divorce still looms large. Meanwhile, Sudhakar and Mumtaz move to Barabanki to start over, but Mumtaz's past returns to haunt her.

The lives of Akhtar and Sarita, Rashmi and Angad, Sunaina and Shalin, Mamta, and Dharam intersect in Agra. The Agra railway station witnesses a brawl, while the police station witnesses a showdown.Some couples come together, while others are torn apart. Life goes on, and love continues to be a mutating virus.

Karishma Upadhyay of Firstpost wrote in her review "Poetic writing, attention to detail make this Netflix Original rise above its low production value".[6] Rohan Naahar from Hindustan Times praised the show by writing "Neeraj Kabi and Sheeba Chadha are excellent in this wistful and wise Netflix India original.".[7] Roktim Rajpal wrote a positive review in Deccan Herald and said that Taj Mahal 1989 "is a simple and effective attempt at storytelling that satisfies the target audience.".[8] In The News Minute Saraswati Datar wrote that the show is "an enjoyable must watch".[9]

I am so glad that Netflix has started churning our good content keeping in mind Indian audience and nuances typical of our country and melting pot culture. In 1989, India went through socio-political changes that in various ways impacted the generations to come. It started with the murder of Safdar Hasmi by INC goons which many busy assuming that only one political party in India plays dirty games seems to have forgotten conveniently. Sachin Tendulkar played his debut match in 1989; Maine Pyar Kiya released in the same year. It was also the year the Berlin wall collapsed and Ayatollah Khomeini issued a Fatwa against Salman Rushdie. All in all it was an era pre internet, dating sites and dating apps like Tinder.

Pushpendra Nath Misra, the series creator has woven many tender moments in a very well written story line. Of the four couples perhaps it is easier to identify with philosophy professor Akhtar Baig (played brilliantly by Neeraj Kabi) and his physics professor wife Sarita (played equally brilliantly by Geetanjali Kulkarni). I said easier because given I am in my 40s and have been married to the same guy for 12 years I could identify with the couple who love each other but end up being at loggerheads while trying to navigate life and adulating. It was also much of a relief to see a man bawling his heart out in front of the local lawyer while filing divorce under mutual consent instead of the wife and the wife fixing electrical plugs while the husband keeps harping shayyari. These are small moments that break stereotype instead of hyping it up.

The couple played by Danish Hussain and Sheeba Chadda who play Sudhakar Misra and Mumtaz respectively, is perhaps most tender. There are so many like Sudhakar and Mumtaz who in their own way break all the society inflicted shackles and tries to live their life with dignity and hard work only to be defeated by fate. And how despite how ill-fated the couple is, one still believes in doing the right thing.

The show features a bunch of youngsters trying to find their way in love and life as they attend college. There is Paras Priyadarshan playing the good looking, hot tempered Dharam, Anshul Chauhan playing the bubbly pretty Rashmi who learns to let go and stand up against violence in relationships as the show progress and Anud Singh Dhaka who plays the witty and deeply caring Angad who reminded me of a younger Ranveer Singh.

What is it about love that inspires and confounds people in equal measure? Why does it inspire sonnets and grand gestures but act like a slippery eel, trickling away from the gaps between two people who are bound by it? Is love mutually exclusive to sex, is it friendship, is it companionship or a spiritual journey where two people, any two people, become the best versions of themselves?

Dharam (Paras Priyadarshan) is in a relationship with Rashmi (Anshul Chauhan) and things are rosy, to begin with. Their mutual friend Angad (Anud Singh Dhaka) who declares that he prefers sex to the entanglements of love is the most fleshed-out character from the younger lot. While these youngsters could have a show by themselves, writer-director Pushpendra Nath Misra seems unsure about how to treat the emotions and dilemmas of his younger characters, leaving them to grapple with half-baked character arcs.

The older characters are far more interesting and get some of the best lines and moments of the series, making me wonder if this show was originally just about them with the youngsters being a later addition. While it starts off as a fun frothy tale with characters breaking the fourth wall for the purpose of exposition, the show meanders haphazardly into more dramatic territory and then exits just as abruptly without really tying up all the loose ends.

There is an unnecessarily long and stretched out student politics track that the makers undermine with humour, never allowing us to get too attached to any of the characters. A minor subplot involving an underage girl who almost gets trafficked was completely unnecessary. The editing of the show is another weak link with abrupt jumps between the parallel stories, instead of creating connections through characterisation, or finding devices like music or locations.

The Taj Mahal, Akhtar tells Sarita, looks pink in the morning, white in the afternoon and golden at night. So even when the greatest monument to love never looks the same, is it fair to expect love to remain unaltered as it 'alterations finds'? The Taj Mahal was built by Shah Jahan in memory of his dead wife, but Taj Mahal 1989 asks us to create monumental love stories by simply never forgetting just how lucky some of us are to find people who love us inspite of ourselves. This one is an enjoyable must watch.

Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the series/film. TNM Editorial is independent of any business relationship the organisation may have with producers or any other members of its cast or crew.

Taj Mahal 1989Original Language HindiDubbing Studio Prime Focus Technologies LimitedVoice Director 1Vastal DubeyVoice Director 2Seaon D'CostaTranslation & AdaptationVineet MahajanRecorded2020Dub Country IndiaOriginal Country IndiaEpisodes7Year2020Taj Mahal 1989 is an Indian Romance Comedy web television Series, that premiered on February 14, 2020 on Netflix.

Set at a time when Karamchand was on cable and B-Tex was on the billboards, Taj Mahal 1989 is a quietly effective little series from Netflix, about themes as evergreen as the majestic monument it is named after.

These are all virtues that Akhtar Baig, a professor of philosophy at Lucknow University, believes he has. But his marriage to Sarita, who teaches physics at the same school, is withering like the half nimbu inside the refrigerator of every middle-class Indian household.

But Misra captures the essence of Lucknow rather well. The sets feel lived-in and suitably rustic, from the linoleum on the tables to the Milton water coolers in the kitchens. And the occasional insert shots of motichoor laddoos and tunde kababs perform double duty of smoothing out some of those irregular transitions and adding vital local flavour.

Set in 1989 Lucknow, the show revolves around an ensemble of characters, of different ages, living different kinds of lives and with different interpretations of love. This is a story that is told in sepia tones with subtle servings of nostalgia and romantic Urdu poetry. It is different.

To Akhtar, all that matters are the words spilling out of his poetry and the ideas in his philosophy books. That the milieu surrounding this man is a no-frills middle class Indian home of the 1980s actually elevates the absurdity of who he is.

There is a fine line between a character like this feeling real and ending up being caricaturish, but Kabi owns the role in a way very few actors can. Every understated gesture, every deliberate pause builds a convincing portrait of a man living in an ivory tower, far removed from reality and genuinely disinterested in everything that is going on around him. He seems more connected to the poets and philosophers whose work he reads, than the people surrounding him.

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