Watching Paheli is quite an experience, and it’s from the very opening shot of the film that its sheer, magical palette overwhelms us. It is so easy to mess a film like this up, but Amol Palekar does remarkably well with Paheli. It’s a leisurely told and naïve dream, and could simply descend into caricature at any point, but never crosses that line. It’s a charming, warm romance capable of gifting the most sceptical of us a big, beaming smile. Children will love it, and the affection involved in the film’s creation is infectiously visible to the audience. And the twist at the end raises astonishingly dark questions about fairytale metaphors, and sends you home thinking. Smiling, but thinking.

Paheli is one of the finest films produced in the recent times. A film like this proves yet again that we don’t need to seek inspiration from outsiders [read Hollywood], when the Indian literature is rich enough to provide us with captivating stories.