Play Review: Hum Safar

REVIEW OF THE WEEK
Play:Hum Safar
Director: Salim Arif
Duration: 90 minutes
Cast: Harsh Chhaya and Lubna Salim
Language: Hindi
Rating: 3
When a long relationship ends, especially if it’s a marriage, there is pain, rejection, and a huge sense of loss that both partners experience eventually, no matter how bad things were between them. Rarely do couples bury the hatchet, put aside their differences and try to forge a new, platonic bond.And when they do manage to do that, there are still a lot of residual feelings.
Hum Safar, a play written by eminent Hindi and Urdu playwright Javed Siddiqui, tells the story of two people, who, despite being at loggerheads, cannot deny the fact that they are soulmates.
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Sameer (Harsh Chhaya) and Sonal (Lubna Salim) seem like the quintessential urban couple; well, at least from an outsider’s point of view. But because of irreconcilable differences, on their 15th marriage anniversary, they decide to divorce amicably and go their separate ways. At this crossroad, they believe that they can start their lives afresh. But as they grow older, over a period of many years, they realise that they have invested way too deeply into one another. They can’t live with each other but they can’t live without each other too!
This isn’t a classic love saga because it doesn’t involve your typical passionate ‘lovers’. Instead, the play celebrates a very unconventional, engaging relationship — that between soulmates. While it has elements of romance, humour and misery, what makes it such a compelling work of theatre is that it throws light on the one emotion that relationship dramas very rarely focus on — regret. Hum Safar has just the right tinge of melancholy, as the characters rue over missed opportunities and what could have ‘been’. As a viewer, you instantly connect to the characters because regret is such a powerful, universal emotion.
Apart from Salim Arif’s poignant direction and Lubna-Harsh’s chemistry, the highlight of the play are the poems of veteran poet Gulzar saab, recited in his own voice and interspersed between scenes.
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