Absar Ahmad
Film Reviewer & Founder of The World of Movies |
Covering Hollywood, Bollywood, and World Cinema since 2015.
Some stories entertain you for a few hours and then disappear from your mind. Others make you think about your own life, your own choices and people you once loved. Musafir Cafe did the latter for me.
Read our full Musafir Cafe review to see why I gave the series 10/10.
I finished the series thinking about Chander, Sudha, and Preeti. At the same time, I also found myself thinking about relationships in my own life and about how differently we understand love as we grow older. The series does not give you simple answers because the relationships themselves are not simple. It shows us that love can be genuine and still not work, that moving on does not mean forgetting and that sometimes the person who is right for your life is not the person you once thought you could never live without.
These are the seven things I took away from Musafir Cafe.
1. A Person’s Presence Can Affect You as Much as Their Absence
One of the most interesting ideas in Musafir Cafe comes through Sudha’s mother. She tells Sudha that the impact someone has on us can be as much because of their presence as their absence, and the series gives that thought a much deeper meaning through Sudha’s own life.
Sudha has lost her father, and his absence changes the way she looks at her responsibilities towards her mother. She feels that she needs to give her mother everything her father could no longer give her, even if that means sacrificing some of her own happiness. At the same time, her mother’s presence also influences the choices she makes and becomes one of the reasons Sudha does not completely move towards the life she might otherwise have chosen.
That makes the idea much more interesting than simply saying that we miss people after they leave. People can shape us while they are with us and continue shaping us after they are gone. Sometimes their presence changes the decisions we make, and sometimes their absence does the same thing.
The thought eventually returns when Sudha says it to Chander. She may be leaving for Singapore, but Chander is not suddenly going to disappear from her emotional life. He will continue to exist in her memories and experiences, just as the people who are no longer physically present in our lives can continue to influence who we become.
That is something I found very true about Musafir Cafe. People do not have to remain in our lives forever to have a lasting impact on us.
2. True Love Is Not Necessarily Perfect Love
This may be the biggest lesson I took from the series. We tend to romanticize the idea of true love as though finding your true love automatically means finding the person with whom you should spend the rest of your life. Musafir Cafe challenges that idea without ever suggesting that Chander and Sudha’s feelings were not genuine. They were. That is precisely what makes their story difficult.
Chander and Sudha have a connection that is obvious from the beginning. There is attraction, affection and an emotional bond that neither of them can simply erase. But a relationship requires more than intense feelings. Two people can love each other deeply and still not be able to create the kind of life that works for both of them. That distinction is painful, but it is also practical.
The series does not ask us to decide whether Chander truly loved Sudha. It asks us to understand whether that love was enough to make their relationship right for their lives. Those are two very different questions.
Sometimes true love is simply true love. It does not automatically become perfect love.
3. No Matter What You Do, It Can Be Difficult to Forget Your True Love
One thing I appreciated about Musafir Cafe is that it does not treat moving on as a clean process. Chander does not simply stop feeling something for Sudha because another relationship enters his life. His memories remain. His feelings have a history, and that history cannot be erased simply because his circumstances have changed. This is where Preeti’s character becomes particularly important.
When she accepts that she cannot take Sudha’s place in Chander’s emotional history, she is accepting something that many romantic stories would rather avoid. Your partner had a life before you. There may have been somebody who mattered enormously to them before you arrived, and you cannot always compete with a memory or demand that it disappear. But that does not automatically make your relationship less real.
I think this is one of the most mature things the series says about love. You can continue to remember someone you once loved and still genuinely love the person who is with you now. Moving on does not require you to hate the past or pretend that it never mattered.
Sometimes you simply learn to live with the memory.
4. Compatibility Can Matter More Than Passion or Attraction
Passion and attraction can bring two people together very quickly. They can create excitement, chemistry and the feeling that you have finally found the person you were looking for. But a life together asks different questions.
Can you understand each other? Can you accept each other’s expectations? Can your ambitions and responsibilities coexist? Can you make decisions together without constantly feeling that one person has to give up something important?
These questions become much more important when the excitement of the initial relationship settles down. This is where the difference between Chander and Sudha’s relationship and Chander’s life with Preeti becomes interesting. The series does not suggest that one relationship had real love while the other did not. Instead, it shows that different relationships can fulfill different emotional needs.
Sometimes the person who gives you the strongest butterflies is not the person with whom everyday life becomes easiest. Sometimes the person who feels less dramatic is the person who understands the life you actually want.
That does not make passion unimportant. It simply means passion alone cannot carry an entire life.
5. Some People Come Into Our Lives Only to Leave
This is probably one of the hardest lessons to accept. We naturally assume that if somebody becomes extremely important to us, they are supposed to remain there. When that does not happen, we often think the relationship failed. Musafir Cafe looks at it differently.
Some people enter our lives for a particular period. They may change us, teach us something, show us a different version of ourselves or make us experience emotions we had never experienced before. Their importance does not become smaller simply because they eventually leave. Sudha and Chander’s relationship is a good example.
Their relationship matters enormously to both of them, but the fact that it does not become their permanent reality does not make what they had together meaningless. It was real while it existed, and its impact remains even after circumstances change.
Maybe that is what growing older teaches us about relationships. Not every important person is supposed to stay forever. Some people are part of one chapter of our lives, and eventually we have to turn the page without pretending that the chapter was never important.
6. Sometimes the Person Who Is Right for Your Life Is Not the Person You Loved the Most
This is probably the most difficult lesson of all. We are used to hearing that we should fight for the person we love. Movies have spent decades telling us that true love deserves to win. Musafir Cafe asks us to consider what happens when the person you love deeply is not necessarily the person with whom your life works best.
Chander’s eventual decision becomes powerful because he is not choosing from a place of hatred or indifference. Sudha still matters to him. His feelings do not suddenly become fake because he chooses Preeti.
What changes is his understanding of what he wants from his life. That is why his final stand carries so much weight. For much of the series, Chander is dealing with circumstances, memories and emotions that seem to have control over him. Towards the end, he finally decides that he will make the decision for himself.
Sometimes maturity means accepting that you cannot have everything you once wanted. It can mean loving somebody and still choosing a different life. That does not make the love less real. It means you have finally understood that love is only one part of a life.
7. Moving On Does Not Mean Your Past Was a Mistake
This may be the lesson I would want people to take away from Musafir Cafe more than anything else. We often judge our past relationships based on how they ended. If a relationship did not last, we start thinking that perhaps we wasted our time or that the person was wrong for us from the beginning. But life does not work that neatly.
A relationship can be genuine, meaningful and important even if it eventually ends. Chander’s feelings for Sudha do not become a mistake simply because he chooses Preeti. Sudha’s place in his life does not become meaningless because they cannot build the life they once imagined. And Preeti does not become a second choice simply because Chander has loved somebody before her.
Different people can matter to us in different ways. The past does not have to be defeated for the present to be meaningful.
This is something I found particularly comforting about Musafir Cafe. The series does not ask us to rewrite our own history. It does not tell us that the person who left was bad for us or that everything we felt was an illusion. Sometimes what happened was exactly what was supposed to happen at that stage of our lives, even if it did not last forever.
What Musafir Cafe Ultimately Made Me Think About
After finishing Musafir Cafe, I kept thinking about how few people actually end up with the person they once believed was their one true love. Most of us change. Circumstances change. The things we want at twenty may not be the things we need at thirty.
Some people leave. Some stay. Some become memories, while others become family. And perhaps we spend too much time trying to decide which relationship was the “real” one. Maybe that is the wrong question.
A person can be your true love and still not be the person who is right for your life. A relationship can end and still be beautiful. You can remember somebody without wanting them back. You can love somebody deeply and still understand that the life you have built with someone else is the life that suits you better.
That is why Musafir Cafe stayed with me. It does not give us the usual romantic fantasy in which love solves everything. It gives us something closer to how life actually works. People affect us, relationships change us, some people leave and others stay, and eventually we have to make peace with the life that is ours.
For me, that is perhaps the most beautiful lesson the series leaves behind: you do not have to regret what you lost in order to appreciate what you found.
