Review Tales

The first time Tamasha released in 2015, I went into the film with a relatively open mind and left it quizzing over the hype. More frustratingly, it was like an inert, creatively bankrupt narrative that annoyed me, if not more strongly, when I revisited the film during the pandemic in 2020. Tamasha appeared as an empty tamasha-list of one of those movies wherein the defenders seemed to laud for being different, and I struggled hard to see beyond its surface.

But fast-forward to 2024, and here I sit in front of the screen, drawn once more to this film which I had all but written off. I work as a corporate employee now, doing the same mundane things every day from 7 AM to 8 PM, six days a week. And it is this changed perspective that suddenly made me see Tamasha through a different lens. Where earlier I had found a film bereft of substance, I now saw a reflection of myself, or more precisely, in Ved, the protagonist of the film. Still, my opinions are divided, but I understand the movie better now.

Let me walk you through my new experience with Tamasha, along with taking up the film’s flaws and its fascinating undercurrent of meta-narrative.

The Corporate Cog Ved Trapped in a Cycle

Let’s start with Ved who is a product manager in a corporate firm and is – well – essentially living a life of quiet desperation. He does not know what he wants from his life; he is just continuing to believe that his routine is something bearable. His routine-mechanical and soul-squashing-is disturbingly similar to my present-day experience. This is where this film hit me most: the idea of an individual stuck in the never-ending wheel of corporate life, unknowingly silencing his real desires and passions in the process.

This shift comes into view in the second half of the movie. The personal turmoil of Ved surfaces when he starts realizing that the life he had been leading did its utmost to suppress his individuality- a realization that mandates an emotional core of the film. The crisis of identity stirred something deep inside, as it probably does for many others caught up in a similar corporate rut. At this point, Tamasha feels like the 3 Idiots for corporate employees—a film that questions the meaning of success and happiness but set in a post-college, working-world context.

But that one moment of Ved breaking down reminded me, and probably many others, of what we have been feeling or at least not telling anybody- the fact that we need to break this circle that we have built for ourselves, yet how wrong it might go. In this way, Tamasha has become a reflection of the struggle of identity by a corporate employee in a world prizing productivity over passion.

Making Sense of the “Tamasha” of It All

And now, onto the first half of the film-my old nemesis. Even with this new appreciation of the second half, I found the first half jarring. The characters do seem a bit caricaturish in their tone; the plot chaotic, too playful. That is especially true when we first meet Ved in Corsica. That character of his in this portion of the film is almost cartoon-like, with the very idea of two strangers agreeing not to tell a single thing about their real lives quite implausible and pressed. It was here that, in 2020, the movie lost me.

But now I do: in retrospect, this part of the film is the “Tamasha” of life- the acting of our personalities that we wear when people watch us and often when we are watching ourselves. Ved in Corsica is acting out an unencumbered-by-reality version of himself, a flighty, fanciful self he dons to escape real life.

And that is probably why the first half seems so caricaturish. It’s exaggerated on purpose, almost theatrical because this is not life. It is a fantasy foisted by Ved in which he can be someone else altogether, a “tamasha” in which one ends up getting lost. Although this part of the movie at times still annoys me, over time, I have realized that it’s a deliberate decision to indicate how dichotomous the fantasy we build for ourselves is from the reality we must face once we return back to the real world.

The title Tamasha becomes reflective of this concept. It’s not just the name one would attach to a film or some grand show; it’s more about the show we put on in our daily lives, be it for our entertainment to escape the drabness or from our inner pains. Where do the Ved and Tara meet for the first time in Corsica? “This is the beginning of a story.” It is a line that hints toward the deeper narrative to come, the eventual unmasking of the “performance” and the confrontation with who we truly are beneath it all.

Storytelling, Songs, and Self-Awareness

Tamasha doesn’t just tell a story-it feels acutely aware of the fact that it’s telling a story. Indeed, much of the plot is narrated directly by the characters themselves, almost as if they know they’re in a film. When Ved and Tara meet in Corsica, their whole interactions really do feel like scenes from a play, each character acting out a persona for the other as if they were consciously creating a story together.

This self-awareness extends to the film’s songs, which add to the meta nature of the film if one looks closely. Songs like “Matargashti” and “Agar Tum Saath Ho” feel less like musical interludes than an integral part of the film’s storytelling fabric. They underlined the central themes of the film-duality, performance, living two different lives.

Maybe I am over-interpreting, but at times it feels like Tamasha plays with the idea that life is a story we tell ourselves and we are all protagonists in a personal epic. The songs, the narration, the framing of the movie pushes this idea to a point where it ceases merely to be a movie about identity. It’s a movie about the stories we tell ourselves to make our lives coherent-and the problem that arises when the story no longer makes sense and the truth has to be faced.

The 3 Idiots for Corporate Slaves

It is often said that 3 Idiots is a movie about students, but in so many ways, Tamasha is the equivalent for corporate slaves, a comparison my friend helped me draw. Where 3 Idiots did the pressures of academics and the race to success, Tamasha is about what happens after you get into the corporate world and finds yourself stuck in the rut of routine and monotony. Both films question the societal expectations, but Tamasha hits closer home to those of us who are well beyond our college days and find ourselves going: “Is this it?

I now look at Ved as a corporate version of Rancho from 3 Idiots-essentially a man stuck in a system that suffocated the emergence of creativity and individuality. While 3 Idiots urged students to listen to their souls, Tamasha deals with the rediscovery of one’s lost soul after years of leading an asphyxiating existence.

Changed Perspective

The Ritesh of 2020 and the Ritesh of 2024 are two entirely different persons. In 2020, I wrote off Tamasha as an inert film that strived too hard to say something profound but simply didn’t. In 2024, it comes across as a film about the tension between life being lived and life being lead.

Everything from the search for one’s identity to the pain of facing ourselves as we really are, to the courage to break free from the vicious cycle had hit closer to home than I could have ever imagined.

Tamasha still has its flaws, especially in the way the first half feels overly whimsical and cartoonish. But perhaps that is the point. Life is tamasha, after all – a spectacle we create, and the stories we tell ourselves as true as we want them to be. Maybe, just maybe, we all need to let the spectacle fall away once in a while and confront the truth waiting beneath.