Creative Quotient
For her first English film, Tanuja Chandra picks up a globally-relevant incident of 9/11 US bombings as the backdrop. Ali Siddiqui (Amit Sial) is an Indian Muslim migrant in the US who has painful childhood memories of communal riots from back home in Mumbai. Now a struggling photographer in New York, Ali runs into a florist and sweetmeat boutique owner, Saloni (Mahima). It’s love at first sight for Ali, while Saloni mistakes him for a long-lost cousin and invites him home. That’s when he realises that Saloni is happily married to Harry (Vikram Chatwal). Soon they become friends, But as luck would have it, Harry perishes in the 9/11 twin WTC bombing. Saloni is widowed and Ali makes it a point to lighten her grief in many ways like showering her with floss cotton to simulate a white Christmas eve!
The hitch? Saloni’s father-in-law (Anupam Kher) is completely opposed to the new alliance. Grief-stricken by his son’s death, he blames the entire Muslim community for it. The socio-ethnic turbulence is in focus and Anupam’s change of heart at the end of the film is ever so predictable and sudden.
Where the script falls short is on the emotional quotient, Tanuja isn’t able to build the inter-personal bonding between any of the characters - there’s hardly any chemistry between Saloni and Harry, and there is no connectivity between Saloni and her in-laws with whom she’s living. Strangely, she lives in a world of her own - in her sweet shop, even here she isn’t ever shown giving any hope or sugar to the customers. The only tangible emotion is Ali’s one-sided love, which is intense and palpable.

Technical Expertise
As a writer-director, Tanuja’s narrative falls short of expectations. She fails to evoke sympathy for any of the characters caught in such calamitous circumstances as the twin towers crash. To her credit, however, she executes Anupam Kher’s emotional break-down expertly. Kher breathes life into the proceedings. Mahima is the sole bright spark in the film. She looks good and acts well too. Debutant Amit Sial pitches in an intense act. Full marks to stylist Anahita Shroff Adjania for giving Mahima a fresh, hip look.
Well-photographed by Nirmal Jani and proficiently cut by editor Hilary Peabody, this 90-minute length is the most heartening part about the film.

verdict
One star for the crisp cut, one-and-a- half-hour long feature and another forMahima’s rejuvenated avatar.