Movie Review: Gustaakh Ishq

 The cat has a woollen knit cap with a pompom. A radio artist still wears a rose in her hair, Fatima Sana Shaikh’s duppattas are exquisitely embroidered, and Naseeruddin Shah’s shawls remind one of Kashmir winters. But Gustaakh Ishq is more than its beautiful clothes and age varnished interiors. It is about the sweep and scope of language, its inherent poetry and its intense tragedy. Urdu is the nest to which the weary bird returns at the end of the day. It is the language of love, of longing, and of leisure. Just as well then that the film is set in 1998, before polarising politics, when Muslims were not othered into invisibility, and their language a mere curiosity.

There is much to love in Gustaakh Ishq. The verbal sparring between Vijay Varma’s faux stu­dent and Shah’s watchful reclusive poet is a delight to watch. They are actors at the top of their game. Shaikh looks ach­ingly beautiful and tormented. Varma starts off as a manipulative publisher wanting Shah’s poems to save his printing press, but ends up a distraught lover seek­ing forgiveness. It is the kind of film in which lovers wait for each other for years, sitting at and passing through railway stations. For poetry to be true, the pen has to rest not on words but on wounds of the heart.