It’s the sort of image that in most films would easily be read as sexualizing a woman. As Satyaveer rides his motorcycle, the glamorous Yana Gupta, wearing a revealing ghagra-choli, appears in the middle of the road, strikes a sultry pose and begins pouring cool water over herself.
And in between all this, a very fetching mirage. Little wonder that though the film’s protagonist, Satyaveer (Abhay Deol), dons a protective jacket in the opening sequence, the scene itself thrums with the sights and sounds of summer: a blazing sun, dry land, withering trees. The line between “summer" and “winter" gets blurred in the Rajasthani town Lakhot, we are told in Navdeep Singh’s excellent film noir Manorama Six Feet Under (2007). Lyricist like Gulzar, with his knack for making bold, almost surreal juxtapositions, to pull that off. Kajara re from Bunty Aur Babli (2005) has the line Tera aana bhi garmiyon ki loo hai, which likens a lover’s arrival to an oppressive summer wind and somehow turns it into a compliment. Or the title song from Chupke Chupke the same year, where the lazy summer afternoon determines the song’s pace and the characters’ movements. The few times summer is evoked as a pleasant thing, one sees references to purvaiya, the climate-moderating summer breeze, and such songs are fittingly gentle and languid: Consider Dariya cha raja deva from Do Jasoos (1975), in which two lovers sing Purvaiya leke chali meri naiya to each other as their boats draw nearer (and we see them mainly in close-up or medium-shot, with the camera not trying anything fancy). It doesn’t help that dhoop (sunlight) or garmi (heat) lyrics often have negative or regressive connotations, as in Dhoop mein nikla na karo roop ki rani from the 1985 Geraftaar, where Amitabh Bachchan, umbrella in hand, tells Madhavi not to walk in the sun because she’ll go from being gori to kaali.