These
women
sleep
for
you.
Not
with
you.
These
are
not
street
walkers.
They
are
sleep
workers,
who
sleep
for
you
when
you
are
busy.
Welcome
to
Makarand
Deshpande's
amazing
world
of
what-if
possibilities.
The
hypnotic
hypothesis
of
Makarand's
play
renders
itself
into
a
quirky,
sometimes
exasperating,
sometimes
invigorating
peep
into
the
troubled
psyche
of
sleepless
souls.
Sona
Spa
exudes
a
kind
of
tongue-in-cheek
wisdom
that's
poised
precociously
between
existential
home-truths
and
plain
nuttiness.
Only
Makarand
Deshpande
could
stride
these
two
incompatible
worlds
of
the
outlandish
and
the
tragic
with
such
a
clear
disdain
for
cinematic
conventions.
Snatching
sleep
and
stealing
dreams
in
a
sleep-spa
run
by
an
unbelievably
benign
non-avaricious
entrepreneur
(Pooja
Pradhan),
is
what
Makarand's
intriguing,
enigmatic,
brutal
and
tender
play-on-celluloid
is
all
about.
The
narrative
penetrates
the
guilty
secrets
of
its
character's
subconscious
and
brings
them
to
the
surface
through
visuals
that
manage
to
stay
afloat
in
spite
of
their
intrinsically
ambivalent
comportment.
Who
can
pin
down
dreams?
Sigmund
Freud
tried.
But
he
saw
sex
to
be
omnipresent
in
the
subconscious.
Makarand's
motion
picture
moves
beyond
the
body
and
the
mind
to
explore
the
soul
which
surrenders
itself
to
sleep
in
search
of
a
salvation
denied
to
human
beings
in
their
waking
hours.
There
are
passages
of
exasperating
self-indulgence
in
the
narrative.
These
are
dwarfed
by
the
conviction
with
which
the
characters
manifest
their
dreams
on
screen,
using
the
frames,
not
only
to
bleed
their
own
reality
but
also
to
blend
their
reality
into
the
wider
truth
of
the
human
existence.
We
all
suffer.
Only
the
methods
applied
to
countermand
our
sufferings
are
different.
At
once,
outrageous
and
hypnotic
Sona
Spa
invokes
a
semi-dream
trance-like
world
of
characters
trapped
in
state
of
frozen
emotional
inertia.
Makarand's
actors
are
predominantly
from
the
stage.
They
bring
to
this
brave
celluloid
rendering
a
strong
sense
of
theatrical
propriety
and
a
mysteriously
undefined
feeling
of
cinematic
sincerity.
Finally
this
film
of
complicated
relationships
between
waking
and
dreaming,
living
and
dying,
speaking
and
thinking,
seeking
and
forsaking
is
a
story
of
a
friendship
between
two
girls
from
different
economic
classes,
one
rich
and
drunk
played
by
Shruti
Vyas,
the
other
middle-class
and
beleaguered
by
bourgeous
problems,
played
by
Ahana
Kumrah.
Both
the
actresses
lift
the
theme's
inherent
improbability
to
the
level
of
credibility.
Naseeruddin
Shah's
cameo
turn
as
a
suave-talking
god-man
is
restricted
to
a
television
plug
for
the
spa.
Then
there
is
the
redoubtable
Nivedita
Bhattacharya
as
a
prostitute
turned
'sleep
worker'
who
tells
it
like
it
is.
Nivedita's
saucy
digs
at
suburban
duplicity
and
a
misguided
moral
righteouness
knock
the
lid
off
the
film's
spasmodic
content,
clearly
exposing
the
hurt
that
lies
under
the
calm
surface
of
lives
lived
on
the
edge
of
an
imminent
calamity.
Chaos
seems
forever
to
be
knocking
on
this
quirky
film's
door.
Makarand
Deshpande
keeps
us
involved
in
the
dreams
of
his
characters.
There
are
many
in-house
jokes
about
sleep
disorder
including
one
about
people
in
Seattle
being
sleepless.
When
Tom
Hanks
decided
to
be
in
Sleepless
In
Seattle,
he
never
dreamt
that
one
day
he
would
be
referred
to
in
a
film
about
a
liberating
dreamscape
inhabited
by
windswept
nomads
running
around
in
search
of
salvation.
The
cinematography
(Rajeev
Jain)
and
the
background
score
(Shailendra
Barve)
go
a
long
way
in
creating
that
state
between
sleep
and
waking
when
we
are
not
too
sure
of
the
reality
outside
the
door.
The
editing,
though,
could
have
been
less
uneven
and
patchy
and
more
sure
of
where
and
when
the
characters
should
stop
speaking.
Not
all
of
the
episodes
hold
together.
But
the
piecemeal
virtues
go
well
with
the
nirvanic
quest
of
these
fragmented
lives.
Sona
Spa
is
a
stirring
wake-up
call
in
the
middle
of
a
troubled
tortured
sleep.
The
performances
by
largely
unknown
theatre
actors
adds
a
compelling
edge
to
the
drama
of
transferred
dreams.
The
film
ends
with
a
devastating
lie
about
a
truth
to
one
of
the
female
protagonist's
about
her
friend's
past.
Here,
the
film
tells
us
what
the
characters
struggle
to
articulate
all
through
the
film.
It's
okay
to
live
a
lie
if
reality
is
too
disappointing
to
be
borne.
Like
it
or
hate
it,
you
can't
be
indifferent
to
Makarand
Deshpande's
vision
of
a
sleep-starved
world,
populated
by
people
with
guilty
secrets
and
dark
desires.
IANS