Musafir Cafe, the latest Netflix series which is a screen adaptation of Divya Prakash Dubey’s popular novel of the same name has already become quite a nation-wide phenomenon. The series has rang an immediate chord with the OTT audience (Netflix has already renewed it for Season 2 after the emotional finale) and the music is truly soulful (Darmiyaan…is literally going on in a loop in my head for weeks…I’m sure that’s true for a lot of you too!). It premiered on the 24th of July and stars Vikrant Massey as Chander, Vedika Pinto as Sudha and Mahima Makwana as Preeti, the three main protagonists in the story.
The plot is a romance with a love triangle, the series explores Chander’s instant spark with Sudha and steady companionship with Preeti, with themes of love, loss and self-discovery , some soul stirring music beautifully enhancing the pangs of unrequited love that runs as the central thematic of the plot and a breathtaking location that literally pushes the audience out of their couch and on to a trip to Mussorie… nonetheless the ending struck quite a different ‘ick’ for me.
Having said that the ending doesn’t provide quite a closure to my appetite, what I was actually drawn to was a deeper exploration of the character of ‘Chander’ as the central male lead, the love-lorn hero, the apparent musafir in the story. Musafir literally means traveller – but he is a traveller who opens a cafe. So he stops travelling to create a space where other travellers stop. It’s a beautiful paradox – the wanderer who becomes an anchor. Netflix’s own logline says he is “a man searching for a life that truly feels like his own”. So his cafe in Mussoorie is not a business plan – it’s an identity project. The hills are not just backdrop, they are where he tests if he can belong.
Before Musafir Cafe, the cafe Chander builds comes into being, he is a young man, bride searching as per his mother’s wishes, but he is not really looking for a woman, he is looking for a feeling – intensity, proof that he is alive and throbbing emotionally! He is a man searching for a life that feels like his own, so every attraction is really a question: “Will this person make me feel more myself?” Sudha, from the very beginning, is coded as presence-in-absence – she sparks and then withdraws, she is warm and then elsewhere. Psychologically, that creates what we call an intermittent reinforcement loop. The unattainable doesn’t diminish desire, it fuels it. Each small return feels like a victory.
In the latter phase of his life, when Chander is seen at the cafe, he has physically stopped and let his roots down. He has apparently created ‘home’. Logically, this is where Preeti should become central – she is committed, giving, low-ego, steady. But this is precisely where his psychology cracks. What I see there as an observer is how for Chander love is still measured by longing, not by being. Sudha remains an idea he has to chase. She never fully arrives, so she never has to do the mundane work of staying – of negotiating, forgiving, waiting. She stays perfect because she stays incomplete. He can project everything refined onto her.
Preeti, by contrast, does the most radical thing – she stays. She is accepting, present, committed. In the economy of pursuit, that presence gets misread as availability, and availability gets misread as less value. Not because she is less, but because Chander’s metric for importance is still: “How much do I have to stretch to reach her?” And that is what belittles Preeti unconsciously within Chander’s perception of her; not her own inadequacy but his own unfinished growth. Her generosity feels less exciting than Sudha’s lure precisely because generosity asks for reciprocity, while lure only asks for pursuit.
When a man has not yet separated love from longing, he mistakes anxiety for passion. The woman who causes anxiety feels like “true love”, the woman who offers calm feels like “settling” – when in fact, psychologically, the opposite is true. When a woman stays, accepts, gives without self-centering, patriarchal conditioning can teach a man to read that as expected, not exceptional. Her commitment stops being seen as a choice she makes daily, and starts being seen as her nature. So she becomes less appealing not because she is less, but because her labour is devalued.
Sudha’s self-centeredness is attractive to Chander not despite it, but because of it. Her being slightly out of reach confirms his story about himself, that he is still the musafir, still searching, still special. Preeti’s committed love threatens that story, because it says – you have arrived, now be accountable.
If we choose to look at the story backwards, from the ending, Chander’s dilemma is not “Who do I love more?”; it is “What do I think love is?”
But the important question here is, is love the zeal of pursuit for the unattainable, or is it the quiet, less cinematic, much more difficult work of honouring someone who stays? Does staying, being accepting, make a woman less appealing to a man than the one who is always out of his reach but keeps luring?
For me, that final frame – Chander succumbing to Sudha’s return while Preeti is still there, trusting, waiting with a heavy heart, unaware – is not a twist. It’s a confession. And once you see it, every earlier scene becomes evidence, not romance. The last episode tells you who Chander was all along.
When he gives in to Sudha while Preeti waits, he makes the choice he has been rehearsing the whole season. It is not a moment of passion, it is a moment of pattern. He chooses the woman who returns over the woman who remains. The return feels like destiny. The remaining feels like background. And that is devastating for Preeti – because her heavy heart already knew. Her waiting was never naive, her heart was aware, but loyal. That scene when she senses SUDHA IN THE CAFE, LOOKS AROUND AND SEES HER STARING AT THE WIND-CHIME, IT IS ALMOST THE MOMENT THAT PREETI AND THE ENTIRE AUDIENCE HAD BEEN DREADING TOO, IN THAT MOMENT OUR HEART JUST STOPPED. In a split second it became obvious that, all along, it was Preeti who was carrying the weight of Chander’s indecision while he called it love.
If you rewatch Chander’s scenes with Preeti after knowing the ending, the way he leans on her steadiness, tells her his fears, lets her hold his cafe together, subtly questions her one chance of being with another caring man, it wasn’t building a future with her. It was borrowing her stability so he could afford to keep longing for Sudha. Her committed, less self-centred, giving nature made her safe to leave on pause. He knew she would still be there. That’s the cruelty hidden in “she is accepting.” Her acceptance became the condition that made his return to Sudha possible.
Sudha’s unattainability from the very beginning, her comings and goings, her half-presence, was never just who she is. It was a dynamic he co-created. He never asked her to stay. He never asked her to be accountable. Because if she stayed, she would become real, and then she would have to be what Preeti is – a person who has bad days, needs, expectations. By keeping Sudha out of reach, he keeps her ideal. The zeal of pursuit is not about Sudha at all. It’s about protecting an image of himself as a man who loves deeply, wildly, tragically – while never having to do the daily work of love.
He builds Musafir Cafe as a place for travellers to stop. But in the final episode, we realize he never stopped. He made Preeti the cafe. She is the structure, the warmth, the place that waits. He is still the musafir deep down – free to step out when Sudha calls. So, Chander, in that last episode, shows he is still a boy who wants to feel, not a man who wants to choose. That’s why that final image of Preeti – unaware, trusting, heavy-hearted is so gutting. For me, she is not just waiting for him. She is carrying the moral weight of the story alone. Her heavy heart knows what her mind does not yet know, that she has been faithful to a man who was only faithful to his own longing.
Finally, it is not about Chander’s choice between two women, for me, Musafir Cafe is about the cost of being Preeti. Musafir Cafe tells us about how male longing feeds on female steadfastness. Well we do have to wait for Season II to find out whether Chander chose Sudha over Preeti but till then this is what I felt I had to say….
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