Slender threads
Sui Dhaaga is well tailored for our aspirational times. Pity it comes apart at the seams, writes
In one of the scenes during the first half of Sui Dhaaga, Mauji (Varun Dhawan), a small-town youth, gets a frantic call from his wife Mamta (Anushka Sharma) who is tending to his ailing mother in hospital. He is summoned just as he is talking to his father and brother and fretting about expenses. He rushes back to find a horde of patients demanding for themselves a similarly comfy embroidered nightie as the one he designed for his mother. Ease of doing business couldn’t get any easier.
The near-absurd ease with which the couple from a low-income family realises its dream of starting its own fashionable textile brand, despite the odd hurdle or getting entangled in a wealthy rival’s machinations, makes the latest movie from the Yash Raj stable just a little too feel-good to be very good.
The film is directed by Sharat Katariya, who had commendably tackled the issue of body-shaming in Dum Laga Ke Haisha (2015). Sui Dhaaga, wearing a “Made in India” tag, comes at a time when the government of the day has been chanting the mantras of “Make in India” and self-employment to stem fears of growing unemployment. Though we are not told where Sui Dhaaga is set, a few incidents unfold in Ghaziabad and Delhi. According to reports, the film was initially shot in Chanderi, the town in Madhya Pradesh famous for its eponymous saris and also where the recent well-stitched horror comedy Stree was based.
The premise of SuiDhaaga drives the plot soon enough. Mauji, who Dhawan claimed was based on the bumbling comic character of Suppandi, is a tailor who is employed and exploited in a shop selling sewing machines. At home, his father (Raghuvir Yadav) is a retired petty government servant who gives him no quarter, while his mother (Yamini Das) runs the household like an assured matriarch with Mamta at her beck and call.
At the wedding of Mauji’s employer’s son, he is asked to mimic a dog and he readily agrees. Only the humiliation writ large on his wife’s face stops him in his tracks. She is clever and resourceful and convinces him to shun his employer and start his own business as a tailor by simply catering to people on the pavement. Mamta is a skilled embroiderer and together they sense their potential when patients scurry to buy garments designed by them.
Mauji’s father disapproves of his entrepreneurial ambitions, and his younger brother unsuccessfully tries to push him into taking up a safe clerical job at a power plant. Mauji and Mamta are also tricked into signing up as factory workers for a design house, at the behest of his sister-inlaw’s conniving brother, Guddu (Namit Das). The designer sells the garment designed by the couple for four times the price to patients, leading to a brawl between Mauji and Guddu. After kicking them out of the workplace, the couple is even denied the sewing machine that they had got from the state at a free distribution camp.
They eventually turn the tables on the design house by winning top prize at a fashion show. The sight of the motley bunch from their small-town neighbourhood — who have become part of the couple’s Sui Dhaaga brand — walking the ramp awkwardly is heart-warming, if implausible, as they feature typically size-zero models.
At just over two hours, the movie is an entertainer designed to make one root for the underdog. And while the lead pair looks and sounds earnestly provincial, there is neither enough dramatic tension nor the staple romantic chemistry audiences come to expect to make their characters stay with us after the credits have rolled out. The ever-reliable Yadav and Das put in fine performances in their limited roles. If only the predictability and slight cheesiness were sewn together effectively, the makers could have boasted of having spun a fine yarn.