“Almost Pyaar With DJ Mohabbat,” directed and written by Anurag Kashyap, has a relevant theme that it discusses but fails to capture the theme’s magic. I attribute it to the constant switches between the flashback and the present. It could have been a beautiful technique to help us understand the correlation between the two couples present in two different countries. Anurag Kashyap has, no doubt, the knack to tell the audience a different yet significant tale of love. This time he uses DJ Mohabbat (Vicky Kaushal) as a host who talks about love. And simultaneously, he presents a love story between Amrita Suri (Alaya F), a Hindu, and Yaqub Siddiqui (Karan Mehta), a Muslim.
India is so diverse that we are tolerant of different religions, making this country our home. Every person is free to practice the religion of their choice. Religions in India teach their faithful followers to respect all the manifold faiths and their traditions, and that is a very important part of their religious identity. But for Indians, love jihad is not a new term, and unfortunately, it is a conspiracy theory that continues to be discussed. There is no denying that forced religious conversions do happen in our country, but they are individual cases that can be handled individually and do not need to be unnecessarily bandied about. The Pew Research Center survey tells us that there are an equal number of conversions taking place, for instance, if there are 0.7% convert from Hinduism, the religion in which they were raised, to any other religion, there are also an equal number converting to Hinduism from other faiths. But this is one of the major issues that “Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat” talks about.
Spoilers Ahead
Why Do Amrita And Yakub Run From Their House In Dalhousie To The Mountains?
When Yakub walks alongside Amrita while she is walking to Dalhousie Public School, her brother is aggravated and wants to get hold of him and beat him up, but Yakub escapes. They then complain to the police station that Yakub has been harassing Amrita. And thus, Yakub is taken by the police to the station and thoroughly beaten, with the police reminding him not to make any advances toward Amrita. But Yakub doesn’t stop; he enters Amrita’s house in the night, wakes her up, and discusses with her running away from the house to meet DJ Mohabbat, whom Amrita is fascinated by and who will be performing in the mountains, returning only after Holi. Amrita undoubtedly loves Yakub, or else she wouldn’t have embarked on this journey with him to Chamba. When they start on this adventure, they do not think about their parents or what will happen if they just abandon their families and go without informing them.
Their chemistry is superb, and they are comfortable with each other. Amrita is smart and educated, whereas Yakub is uneducated. Both of them together run a social media account on which they share their philosophies on life and love. And that also becomes a way by which their parents get to know where they are placed in real-time. Their journey to the mountains is adventurous, as they lose their wallet on the way, and then they think of selling their bike. With the money they get, they try to reside in a house on the hills, which is locked, but the rebellious spirit that Amrita is, she unlocks it with a bobby pin. They plan to reside there for five days, but during those days, they will drink alcohol and sing and dance. And one day, while watching TV, you learn that their absence at home has caused a lot of uproar, not just at home but throughout the whole country. The owners of the house, too, return and cry and crib about their son Harminder. Despite having paddy fields, they had seen that their son Harminder was studious, so they’d sent him to Germany to pursue engineering studies. He studied and got married to a neonazi girl, later came out, got married to a man he loved, and never returned to India. When they look at Yakub, they remember their grandson, Harmeet Singh, who looks like him. But when they watch the news on TV, they get anxious and advise Amrita to stay safe and away from harm.
Why Is Harmeet Singh Imprisoned?
In the parallel universe, in London, Ayesha Salim Phgura is smitten by DJ Harmeet, and therefore she pursues him so much that she just wants to be with him. Ayesha wants to get Harmeet’s attention by any means possible. But Harmeet is focused on music, and he wants to do well in it. Ayesha is not able to convince Harmeet and therefore drinks a lot of alcohol one day and throws up while dancing. Harmeet, in an attempt to help, takes Ayesha, a minor, to his home. But Ayesha takes it in the wrong sense and gets all her belongings and comes to reside with Harmeet. Uncomfortable in her presence, Harmeet requests that she go away, but later, when she expresses that she is unable to decide what to do because of the constant struggle that she is going through in her mind, he allows her to stay back. But then her father, a Pakistani billionaire, gets Harmeet arrested and he’s sentenced to jail for three years for sexually assaulting a minor.
Ayesha is unable to do anything about it, and neither are Harmeet’s parents. Only when Ayesha reaches the age of legal responsibility does she hire a lawyer and give out a statement that she wasn’t raped by Harmeet. But by then, Harmeet had gone through a lot of torture within the four walls of the jail, all for the one-sided fascination of Ayesha for Harmeet.
‘Almost Pyaar With DJ Mohabbat’ Ending Explained – What Happens To Yakub? Do Harmeet And Ayesha Get Together?
When Amrita gets anxious and worried about her dad, Baldev Suri, a former MLA, she plans to abandon her desire to go and meet DJ Mohabbat and to return to her dad. She is innocent and doesn’t know of the implications it will have when she and Yakub return home. She wants Yakub to join her, saying that her father will forgive Yakub if she convinces him. But Yakub knows for sure that none of it is true and that if he returns, he will be killed. They had run away from the house just to meet the person they were amused by, but they were both misunderstood. Yakub is killed by Amrita’s brother, who alleges that Yakub had plans for love jihad.
On the other hand, when Harmeet is released from prison because of Ayesha’s testimony, he goes straight back to his home to collect his belongings. He is adamant about not having nothing to do with Ayesha because, from the time she entered his life, he’s had nothing but trouble. And it is because of her that he wasn’t able to focus on his passion, i.e., music. Ayesha tries to explain to him and apologizes for whatever he has to go through because of her. But Harmeet doesn’t budge to accept the apology. He wants Ayesha out of his life, so both of them should separate. Harmeet tells her that it will be better if she goes and dies. In anger, Ayesha drives her car at high speed and meets with a serious accident. In both cases, we notice how, just for the sake of love, one can go to any extent and make a sacrifice of oneself for the other. Love is tricky and delicate, and it shouldn’t be labelled.
“Almost Pyaar With DJ Mohabbat” makes it clear that every person in society should make their own decisions rather than have society make them for them, especially when it comes to loving and choosing a life partner. When society makes the decisions, and we follow, it looks as if we are computer-programmed robots. It also clearly states that love begins within us, not outside of us. So, those propagating the love jihad theory ought to find out whether love is residing in them or not because if it did, they would not have blindly killed people.
