Kho Gaye Hum Kahaan

Honest review/musings.

The new Netflix special from Arjun Varain Singh starring Siddant Chathurvedi, Ananya Panday, and Adarsh Gaurav showing three close friends juggling life as 20-somethings in Mumbai, where romance, ambition, and heartbreak collide with the addictive draw of social media. It comes in an adoring packaging, a beautiful setting, pretty clothes, good lighting, nice edits, a smooth flow of storyline, and some thought-provoking insights. But that’s it. As the social media life it tries to mock or break us free from, it is shallow. The focus is entirely on superficial issues that I had to ask myself, Is this the fulfilling/aspirational life that we are living for? Parties, pretty clothes, puppies. Breakups, boredom, beer. And more importantly, self-centered, and self-obsessed, where there is no government machinery, no active voices, no social issues, no discrimination, just a “beautiful” life waiting to be realized, how beautiful!

And are our social media influencers all fake ones as the movie hints? Absolutely not. We have wonderful examples of learning, unlearning, and relearning done through social media. We agitate, we protest, we rise and revolutionize. We find loopholes to bypass the algorithm that suppresses voices. The Israel occupation of Gaza and the Palestinian support is the latest shining example.

Maybe I was wrong, this movie is after all a Netflix special. It is tailor-made for its consumers- the urban rich. The upper class take on life, a focus on their issues. Perfect. A feel-good, self-assurance moral science lecture to 1% of them. If it wasn’t written by Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti I wouldn’t have watched it in the first place. I was wrong to expect better. As advertised, it is never a proper retrospection to today’s generation. Is it the Dil Chahta hain or Zindagi Na Milega Dobara of our generation? NEVER.