Agar hum apni zindagi ka steering wheel apne haath mein nahi lenge na ... toh koi doosra driver seat par baith jayega - Dear Zindagi Movie dialogue

Dear Zindagi Movie

Dear Zindagi (English: Dear Life) is a 2016 Indian coming of age drama film written and directed by Gauri Shinde. It was produced by Gauri Khan, Karan Johar and Shinde under the banners of Red Chillies Entertainment, Dharma Productions and Hope Productions respectively. The film features Alia Bhatt in lead role, with Ira Dubey, Kunal Kapoor, Angad Bedi and Ali Zafar in supporting roles. Shah Rukh Khan plays an extended cameo role in the film. The plot centers on a budding cinematographer named Kaira, who is in search of a perfect life and meets Dr. Jehangir, an unconventional thinker. He helps Kaira in gaining a new perspective about life.

Development began in 2015, when Shinde signed Bhatt and Shah Rukh Khan for a film to be made under her banner. The principal photography of the film took place in Goa and Mumbai. The film features soundtrack album, which is composed by Amit Trivedi. The lyrics for songs were written by Kausar Munir except for one song. Dear Zindagi released on 23 November 2016 in North America, two days before its worldwide release on 25 November 2016, to positive critical notice, with major praise directed to Bhatt's performance and proved a good commercial success.

The film is set in Mumbai and Goa. Kaira is a promising cinematographer. Fatima, Jackie and Ganju are her three best friends. Her cheerful life becomes a nightmare when the guy she loves, a film producer, Raghuvendra ends up engaged to someone else, and for whom she breaks up with a restobar owner, Sid, in between. Her landlord turns her out of her apartment because the building association wants to rent apartments only to married couples. This serves as a catalyst for her shift to Goa to live with her parents, a fact she detests. All this ends up with her spending many sleepless nights.

While in Goa she seeks out Dr. Jehangir Khan, a Goan psychologist after accidentally having heard him talk at a Mental Health Awareness Conference for her insomnia. Meanwhile, she meets a musician, Rumi, whom she starts to develop feelings for, but ditches before anything serious can happen. She also meets her younger brother, Kiddo. Matters with her family come to a head when Kaira has an outburst at a family get-together where she confronts her parents about them abandoning her for years at her grandparents' house.

She finally narrates the story of her abandonment to Jug who tells her that she fears abandonment so much that she doesn't allow herself to commit in relationships for fear of being abandoned. He convinces her that she doesn't need to forgive her parents for abandoning her but she can as an adult see them as two regular people who made a mistake. He says, "Don't let the past blackmail your present to ruin a beautiful future." After this, Kaira makes an effort to reconcile with her parents and also works to finish her short film.

The movie ends with a viewing of Kaira's film where she meets a furniture dealer who might turn out to be a prospective lover.

When we meet Kaira aka Koko (Alia Bhatt) in Dear Zindagi first, she is working. On a set. Looking at the world through a lens, constructing pretty images. We know, from her smile, and from the appreciative comments of her co-workers, that she is good at what she does.

To have a female lead presented as possessing a profession from the get-go, and excelling at it, still feel like a significant step for a Bollywood movie. And to have Kaira declare to a current love that she has had a fling with another feels nothing short of a revolution.
Right there, within a few minutes of the opening of ‘Dear Zindagi’, director Gauri Shinde has us intrigued. We want to know more about Kaira, about what makes her tick, what she wants to do, because she wants to do something, be someone.

And then, just as suddenly, the film gets becalmed. It stops moving. It becomes, instead, a sea of words, where Kaira and her besties — played by Ira Dubey and Yashwasini Dayama (last seen in ‘Phobia’), and her potential romantic interests (Kunal Kapoor, Ali Zafar, Angad Bedi) — chat up a storm, in living rooms, bars, parties, cars. And nothing happens slowly as we get to know that the confident Kaira is actually just a sorry mess, and underneath all that bluster lives a scared little girl, dealing with childhood trauma and abandonment issues.


 What could have been a solid drama with emotional heft—the qualities that made Shinde’s debut ‘English Vinglish’ such an engaging watch–built upon the exploration of the fact that our adulthood is shaped by our childhood in ways we don’t really understand, turns into a kitchen sink talkathon, where all the characters are given lines which are meant to be deep but come off mostly banal and obvious.

The vehicle through which, or should we say whom, Kaira Learns Life-Lessons, is a dishy shrink played by Shah Rukh Khan. Dr Jehangir Khan has her sit across him in his cosy consultation room, takes her off for long walks on the beach, and teaches her that playing with waves is not just a game. It is Life Itself.
Also read | Dear Zindagi celeb review: Bollywood says Shah Rukh Khan, Alia Bhatt film’s too good
Real-life therapists might gape when they see Dr Khan brushing off rules, dimpling his way through his sessions, while giving Kaira, and us, lectures on the virtues of finding the right chair only after experimenting with several (for chair, read relationship, and roll your eyes).

More eye-rolls are caused by the dialogues which are straining to be natural, but end up being far too many for much too little. Finally, despite Alia Bhatt’s clear and present spark ( she keeps disappearing into the construct of the Fragile, Vulnerable Little Girl, coming up for air only once in a while) and Shah Rukh’s raffish charm (he keeps reaching out for the right `sur’, a mix of gravitas and lightness, and catches it only occasionally, letting us notice the white in his beard : hey, look, there’s a superstar playing his age!), ‘Dear Zindagi’ comes off as a film which could have done with less preciousness, and more plot.