Review : Kusum Ka Biyaah : Lockdown wedding woes!

A few years back the entire world including India became a victim of #Corionavirus. This deadly virus had brought the entire world to standstill and India too adopted lockdown measures to avoid spread of this deathly disease. Of course the common man was the most affected as many of them were poor including daily wage earners. The #lockdown saw postponement of marriages or low attendees wedding. #KusumKaBiyaah is a movie which tells a story, inspired from true incidents, of a wedding which turned out to be nightmare for the ‘Baratis’ including the groom and the bride.

Sunil Munda (Lovenkash Garg) is a resident of Jharkhand who is getting married on Kusum Soren (Sujana Darjee) who stays a few kilometers away in Bihar. Due to the onslaught of pandemic their marriage is postponed to 24th March 2020, on a day total shutdown and lockdown was announced by the Prime Minister of India. Due to curfew, lockdown and social distancing norms the entire ‘Baraat’ gets stranded in Bihar. After a few days they get a permission to leave the place and they all travel on foot on a bridge connecting Bihar and Jharkhand. But they are denied to enter Jharkhand as they do not have a permission letter to enter that state. They go back to Bihar but they are refused entry because they had permission only to exit, but not of entry. The wedding entourage had to spend a few days and nights on the bridge. What transpires during and in between the stay on bridge forms the crux of the story.

Though the story of Kusum Ka Biyaah is inspired by true events, it doesn’t evoke sympathy now as a lot of time has elapsed after lockdown phase. But the writers have underlined the red tapism which impacted the common rural population. It shows the lack of empathy of government servants towards commoners despite the latter providing for former’s paychecks. The direction is straight forward and the director pinpoints quite a few thing through sub text. He has intelligently used the ‘bridge’ as a character right from the first frame. Production values and technical side should have been better. Lovenkash Garg and Sujana Darjee deliver good performances and the entire supporting cast has done a good job.

‘Kusum Ka Biyaah’ deftly comments on societal challenges and bureaucratic intricacies faced by common people during the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown.

Rating : ***