Is love chemistry or mathematics? Can people be reduced to the sum total of their likes, dislikes, attributes and opinions? Maa Ka Sum protagonist Agastya aka Gust (Mihir Ahuja), a math prodigy, is unshakably convinced that finding the perfect partner is merely a matter of perfecting an algorithm. Now, we know what to take from such stories. That love isn’t so calculated, that it isn’t an equation that can be solved on a blackboard, that it is an unexplained feeling, an elusive X whose value can’t be arrived at by mere matching of interests and opinions of two people. The series, however, takes eight stretched episodes to arrive at this simple math. Moreover, it gets on many unfinished detours along the way. Maa Ka Sum often imbibes the characteristics of its lead character and starts functioning with calculations rather than emotions. The writing gets plain, assembled, comprising plastic feelings. And for all that math, nothing seems to add up.
Cast: Mihir Ahuja, Mona Singh, Ranveer Brar and Ismeet Kohli
Directed by: Nicholas Kharkongor
Streaming on: Prime Video
Rating: 2 stars
19-year-old college student Agastya lives with his single mother Vinita (Mona Singh). After she suffers through a string of failed relationships, Agastya takes it upon himself to crack an algorithm which can ensure she gets perfect matches via her dating app. In college he has an on-and-off girlfriend Annie (Celesti Bairagey) and an assorted friend group, full with an overconfident Jaat boy (the show is based in Delhi), an assured, loudmouthed girl and a post-Covid germophobe who is attached to his surgical mask like Jughead to his hat. There is also a hot Math professor Ira (Angira Dhar), who has recently joined the college, and is helping Agastya in developing the algorithm, while also teaching him about love and life along the way.
The show starts light-hearted and fun. Agastya and his mother Vinita have a modern relationship in which they can discuss both dating and drinking. Their adorable dynamic, however, gets undone by surface-level writing. Vinita’s expression of love is as imaginative as ruffling Agastya’s hair leaving him annoyed. Individually too the characters aren’t crafted with many layers or explored in depth. Vinita is initially shown to be a mother throwing Bollywoodisms and Gen Z-lingo every now and then (“shizz”, “simp” also “NATO” (Not Attached to Outcome)). But these mannerisms are merely quirks that are shed soon enough. Agastya, on the other hand, often operates like a math-bot having no other dimension beyond applying cold logic to everything.
Maa Ka Sum often gets into zones it isn’t equipped to navigate. It grabs on to a narrative thread, considers it and then decides to not go forward with it. The result is a show that begins to branch out in multiple directions with conflicts being introduced and solved hurriedly and haphazardly only to progress the plot. There are multiple shots of Agastya and Ira, scratching their heads while looking at a sea of variables on the blackboard, but it is never explained to us, at least in understandable terms, what exactly they are stuck at. Words like “multiple neural network modeling” are thrown around maybe to present the show as more smart than it actually is.
Mona Singh effortlessly slips into Vinita and plays her with an infectious ease but even her acting acumen can’t cover-up the thinness of her character. Mihir is competent but falters in intense sequences. The charm of Ranveer Brar as Vinita’s prospective partner is a treat to watch. In Maa Ka Sum, characters discuss and decipher equations like they are poetry but love is offhandedly described as a “forever waali feeling.” Math is presented like a divine mystery but relationships are just a matter of adding or subtracting. It is an unsolvable problem.