Anirban (Saswata Chatterjee) is a simple man, a professor of English literature at a Kolkata college, happily married to Ira (Raima Sen) and has an adorable daughter Niharika. Anirban is a communist at heart and lends his ideals to his students who Al.ost worship him. Everything looks fine on the surface, but there's tension simmering underneath - there's Rudra (Ritwick Chakraborty), Anirban's childhood best friend who has a soft corner for Ira and she knows it too well, making Anirban somewhat jittery and jealous. Ira makes no bones about her admiration for Rudra too, not out of the reciprocation of love, but as a friend and support. The triangle is the root cause for the drift and breakdown of communication among them.
Anirban has a secret friend too, but in London, by the name Georgina Abbott, who is apparent to Ira only on Facebook by a profile picture and she feels threatened by her presence in her husband's life. She knows that they meet when he travels to the UK once a year, but falls short of accusing him of infidelity. On one such visit to the Oxford University to deliver a few lectures, Anirban dies in his sleep - shortly after Ira has wished him on his birthday, and the news is relayed to Ira by Georgina. Tarikh then charts the reactions of Ira, Rudra, Niharika, the rest of the family and Anirban's students and friends after his death. Ira's discovery of Georgina by mere chance is meant to be an eye opener to her and to project how conscious, honest and unique her husband was, but it doesn't inspire.
Churni Ganguly is at the helm of this movie, but I failed to gather her real objective. Whether it was about portraying the positive aspects of social media (Facebook in particular), or was it about a triangular love story or was the the film meant to showcase a unique personality steeped in simplicity and philosophy about life and death, remains open to interpretation. I ended up rather confused about the several mixed messages and preachings in the form of an art house film, instead of being impressed. The format of the film appeared to be a distraction, constantly moving forward and back with dates and incidents instead of underlining the title. The Performances of Saswata, Raima and Ritwick are praiseworthy though.
