When Urdu Fiction Meets Cinema
Rating: ★★★½ (For the niche audience it deserves)
Gustaakh Ishq belongs to a genre that doesn’t quite exist yet. Call it “Urdu Fiction.” Much like science fiction imagines futures shaped by technology, this film imagines a world shaped by poetry and cultural memory. Both are equally unreal, and both require a willing suspension of disbelief.
Gustaakh Ishq: Kuch Pehle Jaisa
(translation: Audacious Love: Something Like Before)
Director Vibhu Puri has crafted something peculiar. A make-believe movie set in a make-believe Malerkotla that speaks a language barely spoken anymore, telling a story so thin it barely exists. And yet, for those who can slip into its rhythm, it works.
The Plot
Pappan (Vijay Varma), a struggling Urdu printer cum publisher, wants to publish the forgotten poetry of Aziz (Naseeruddin Shah), a once-celebrated Urdu poet now living as a watchmaker in Malerkotla. The irony cuts deep: Aziz spends his days trying to fix time, haunted by a youthful betrayal of love he can never undo. When Pappan arrives with ambition and reverence, Aziz projects his own guilt onto the younger man, fearing betrayal even where none exists.
That’s it. That’s the story.
But the film isn’t really about plot. It’s about regret, repentance, and the weight of words left unsaid.
The Performances
Every actor delivers. Naseeruddin Shah inhabits Aziz with the quiet dignity of a man who has made peace with his irrelevance but not with his conscience. Vijay Varma brings earnestness without melodrama. Fatima Sana Shaikh grounds the emotional stakes. This is the kind of ensemble work that reminds you why acting matters more than action.
The Ashraf Nostalgia
Here’s where the film stumbles commercially. Gustaakh Ishq feeds a very specific nostalgia: middle-class Ashraf family drama. Think of Mughal-e-Azam’s royal nostalgia, but brought down to earth. No palaces, just poetry. No grandeur, just tehzeeb (cultural refinement) fading in a watchmaker’s shop.
For the 5% of Ashraf Muslims, who know Urdu couplets and remember when poetry was social currency, this film is a homecoming. For everyone else, it plays like a documentary of someone else’s culture.
Even within Muslim society, this speaks only to a narrow slice. The Ashraf world with its endogamy, cousin marriages, and kafa’a principles remains intact but invisible. They take lineage seriously. They don’t mix. And this film doesn’t try to translate their world for outsiders.
The Language Trap
The film is built on a language that exists more in literature than in life. Classical Urdu, with its Persian grace and measured refinement, sounds beautiful. But it creates distance. In Pakistan, modern Urdu has been hijacked by Arabic imports. In India, this older register is understood but not lived in.
So the dialogue feels like museum pieces. Beautiful, yes. But not relatable to 95% of the audience.
The Musical Paradox
For a movie steeped in Urdu poetry, the soundtrack disappoints. Only one song lingers: “Ham Fana Ho Gaye.” It’s contemporary in sound, rooted in modern production, yet it carries the film’s emotional weight better than anything else.
The irony? The film looks and feels like a period piece from 100 years ago, yet its most memorable element is thoroughly modern. The memorable background music slips into Punjabi textures, which makes sense once you know Malerkotla is actually a Punjabi-speaking town, not an Urdu enclave.
The Malerkotla Detail
Here’s a fact that adds another layer: Malerkotla has never figured in Indian cinema before. It’s a town with a proud history. Its nawab famously opposed Aurangzeb’s persecution of Guru Gobind Singh’s sons. But it was never part of the Mughal cultural machinery. It’s Punjabi, not courtly Urdu.
By setting this Ashraf nostalgia story there, the film creates a kind of fictional geography. It’s asking Malerkotla to stand in for a lost Urdu world it never really belonged to. The locals might have watched out of pride at finally being seen. Yet the revenue contribution of Malerkotla to the movie was just a few lakhs. Perhaps they too did not get it.
The Malhotra Touch
This is fashion designer Manish Malhotra’s debut as producer. You can see his fingerprints on every costume. The period dresses are impeccable and authentic without being showy. The visual refinement is there in every frame. He excelled in this niche project.
To understand why this feels so niche, you need to know the hierarchy. Indo-Muslim society historically divided itself into Ashraf and Ajlaf. The Ashraf class consisting of Syeds, Sheikhs, Pathans, Mughals, claimed noble or foreign descent. They were the poets, the scholars, the cultural elite. The Ajlaf were the working classes: weavers (julahe), carpenters, tailors (darzi), artisans. The division was rigid and maintained through endogamy and the principle of kafa’a (social compatibility in marriage).
Which brings us to an old Ashraf quip: “Ab darzi bhi movie banayenge?” (Now even tailors will make movies?) It was meant as sarcasm centuries ago, a way to guard cultural boundaries. But here we are. The most famous darzi in Bollywood has produced a film about the very Ashraf world that would have dismissed him. The irony is delicious. Malhotra has certainly pulled a fast one on Ashraf thought process.
Draining ₹15 Crore
The film cost roughly ₹15 crore and earned ₹2.29 crore at the box office. By commercial standards, it’s a flop. But Malhotra never set out to make a masala hit. With sharper dialogues, a couple of catchy songs, and some mainstream Hindi film tropes, this thin plot could have sparked a week of box office fire.
Instead, he chose to make an “article movie.” A cinematic essay. A festival piece that premiered at IFFI and aimed for prestige over profits. That choice is admirable, even if it doomed the film commercially.
Target Audiance
If you love Urdu couplets scattered like small jewels through dialogue, this film rewards you. If you enjoy the mood and texture of Naseeruddin Shah’s old art-house films like Sparsh, Mirch Masala, you’ll recognize the aesthetic. If you can treat a movie like science fiction (accepting an unreal premise and savoring the world-building), Gustaakh Ishq works.
But it has no entertainment in the conventional sense. No spectacle. No narrative momentum. Just atmosphere, regret, and the quiet beauty of words.
The Verdict
Gustaakh Ishq is a strange, beautiful failure. It’s a film made for a world that barely exists anymore, using a language most people don’t speak, telling a story almost no one can relate to. And yet, the performances are strong, the visual design is gorgeous, and the ending, no spoilers, earns its emotional weight.
It’s Urdu Fiction: unreal, niche, and utterly sincere.
If you’re among the few who know why “Ham fana ho gaye” hits differently when you actually understand the weight of those words, watch it. For everyone else, it will feel like someone else’s memory, elegantly filmed but forever out of reach.
Recommended for: Lovers of Urdu poetry, fans of slow-burn art cinema, and anyone who can appreciate a film that chooses dignity over accessibility.
Not recommended for: Anyone seeking entertainment, plot, or mainstream appeal.
In the end, Gustaakh Ishq commits the most audacious act of all: it refuses to translate itself. And perhaps that’s exactly what it should be.