Vaidya is a recently released short film that’s a tale of Kabir and Vaidya. The 22-minute long film captures the journey of the two lead characters who meet at a beach and start liking each other. What follows is Kabir making a promise to come back for Vaidya and not living up to it with Vaidya eventually confronting him in Gurgaon and leaving. Vaidya is written and produced by Harsh Agarwal who has directed it with Sumit Pawar. In lead roles, Ronit Agrawal plays the character of Vaidya and Kabir is played by Puneet Kumar Mishra.
Vaidya surely has a cinematic appeal and establishes a connection. The dialogues are engaging. Both Ronit and Puneet have performed well. Ronit is extraordinary as Vaidya and while Kabir is only the second lead, Puneet’s powerful acting makes the audience not just feel Kabir’s presence but also empathise with him and understand his position to not live up to the promise he made.
The film also has a mythical angle but that’s not enough to justify a number of impractical incidents that Agarwal’s screenplay suffers from. The probability of meeting each other randomly and hitting off two people of the same gender who don’t even know if they both are interested in the same gender is next to nil.
Also, why did Vaidya only choose Kabir and not anyone else? Any logical explanation regarding this is absent from the story. Vaidya randomly finding Vaidya in a city like Gurgaon is also a bit off. And why didn’t he come before? What triggered him to go and confront?
The film seems to blank too often on the excuse that there is a mythological twist to it and suffers from plot holes. When you realize that no queer actors were cast for the film (which was not very difficult to do), it almost feels unfair. With openly gay actors now winning national awards, it could have been possible to have actors from the community.