Masaba Masaba | Directed by Sonam Nair| Starring Masaba Gupta, Neena Gupta
Genre: Comedy, Drama
My Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Spontaneity. The show oozed oodles of spontaneity and I couldn’t help but fall for the talented but hapless queen of this breezy, spirited drama, Masaba Gupta (of course!).
Masaba, Masaba is a fictionalized account of Masaba’s life and has a generous helping of real-life elements, including her professional slice and her mother’s casting which is played by none other than her real-life mother, the legendary Neena Gupta. It throws light on her life as a fashion designer with its pressures and opportunities, her relationships and the clouds they bring and mess her up with and lastly, the inevitable shadows of her mother tugging at her heels and her struggles to both embrace and distance them.
It is clear from the very first episode (of the 6 perfectly crisp ones) that Masaba has inherited her mom’s acting genes in abundance and carries an effortless confidence to add to the cake. She is fiesty and impulsive, funny and vulnerable, but above all, a natural. Whether it was her creative block or her fallout with her bestie, her impromptu parties for her mother to her sudden decision to move out, she endears with her vivacity and part goofiness.
But what warmed my heart the most was the mother-daughter relationship.
The warmth and the understanding, the care and the dilemmas, came shimmering through and I was, once again, in awe of Neena Gupta. What a delight she is on the screen! And with Masaba, the delight was doubled and a blanket of assurance rested pretty on my heart. The thing about mothers and daughters are… well, a thing only they can decode. And I smiled at the similarities I could draw to my own life.
It was absolutely wonderful to watch Neena ji in a proper series after long and I realized how much I missed watching her perform. There are some moving scenes, which without giving spoilers, I can say shall make you sit up and acknowledge the cut-throat competition in showbiz and the necessity to be constantly on one’s toes. Neena ji nails it, every time.
The supporting cast is also very easy on the eye and add elements of style and humor to the narrative. Neil Bhoopalam and Rytasha Rathore, especially, bring ample zing to their roles as Masaba’s investor and bestie respectively. Very little, in my eye, appeared whitewashed in the series and authenticity is what happened to scored high.
Watch it for a fuzzy, good feeling, one that we all are craving for every day in the current times. And then, go and hug your mom or daughter 🙂
SEEMITA DAS 