“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves.” – Pico Iyer’s words perhaps describe Karwaan better than anything else: a journey that begins with escape and slowly turns inward.
Directed by Akarsh Khurana, Karwaan (2018) follows Avinash (Dulquer Salmaan), Shaukat (Irrfan Khan) and Tanya (Mithila Palkar) on an unexpected road trip from Bengaluru to Kochi after a mix-up involving two bodies.
Blending quiet humour, grief and an unhurried slice-of-life rhythm, the film finds character in its travellers, roads, vehicles, landscapes and everyday spaces.
This review explores what Karwaan offers architects and designers through its attention to mobility, context and human behaviour, while tracing how its journey gives three people a much-needed pause from their everyday lives.
An Unlikely Beginning
Karwaan begins with an almost absurd collision of ordinary lives.
Avinash, a withdrawn Bengaluru-based IT professional, is caught in the monotony of a life that seems perfectly functional from the outside, when news of his father’s death in a bus accident abruptly pulls him out of it. The catch is that the body does not quite reach him as expected.
A mix-up involving two coffins sends him, his friend Shaukat and Tanya, a young adult who has lost her grandmother in the same accident, towards Fort Kochi to sort things out.
What follows is a road trip shaped by awkward conversations, wrong turns, roadside stops, hilarious escapades and unexpected acquaintances. The van they travel in soon becomes their little world: Avinash is quietly relieved to escape his usual confines, Shaukat lends critique-laced humour at every detour, and Tanya brings an easy curiosity to the mix.
What begins as an inconvenience gradually gives all three characters something their everyday lives rarely allow: time away from routine, with people they did not choose, and enough distance to simply be themselves.
Their differences never feel like problems to solve; they travel, laugh, argue and slowly open up.
The actors’ understated performances and the narrative’s easy pacing make the movie feel less like watching three characters follow a plot and more like accidentally spending a weekend with three strangers you somehow end up knowing rather well.
Okay, But Where Are We?
One of Karwaan’s quiet strengths is the way it finds character in the places it passes through.
From Avinash’s compartmentalised Bengaluru office and modest home to Shaukat’s garage, an airport delivery hangar, roadside dhabas, petrol pumps, hospitals, lodges and Kerala homes, the film builds a visual directory of spaces that feel naturally encountered rather than staged.
As the journey begins towards Fort Kochi, its surroundings gradually open up.
From the controlled rhythm of the city to greener, brighter and more vernacular settings, what makes these places particularly enjoyable is how familiar they feel: they are the kinds of spaces one might actually find on a road trip through India, rather than picturesque backdrops inserted merely for effect.
Even a bridge, verandah step or roadside pause receives a moment of attention, allowing the characters to settle into the spaces rather than simply pass through them.
By the time they reach Fort Kochi, the rising traffic and density feel like a final shift in scenery after the freedom of the road.
Karwaan makes ordinary places worth noticing because, along the way, its characters have finally found the time to notice them too.
Look Again: The Background Is Busy
What shines through Karwaan is how rarely it treats its built surroundings as passive scenery.
It is to the filmmakers’ credit that the camera allows architecture to participate in the scenes rather than simply sit behind it.
Doorways, windows, arches, alleys and vehicle interiors repeatedly frame the characters and their interactions, sometimes separating them, sometimes bringing them together, and often making the viewer feel as though they too are travelling with them.
Shots from inside the vehicles are especially effective: their interiors become moving frames through which the world unfolds, almost turning them into quiet witnesses to the journey.
Even the dialogue brings architecture into the characters’ humour and curiosity, as when Shaukat wonders about the cow perched high on a Temple’s Gopuram or casually rests against spherical landscaping stones.
Across the film, traditional and contemporary buildings, laterite surfaces, tiled roofs, wooden details and landscaped courtyards shape its visual world without demanding outright attention.
Karwaan simply lets its characters interact with these surroundings, trusting the built environment to perform its part in the story, and in doing so, it reveals something of who they are, observing what catches their attention, where they pause and how they choose to occupy a place.
A Gentle Unravelling
Complementing this interplay between its built environment and characters, Karwaan’s light, colour and music impart much of their emotional identity to its frames.
Cinematographer Avinash Arun makes generous use of natural daylight, morning light and soft shadows, while eye-level shots place the viewer within the film’s world rather than turning it into a spectacle.
Translucent curtains, tiled surfaces, wooden openings and even ordinary benches become visually memorable through the simplicity of light falling across them.
Restrained reds, blues, greens and yellows add personality to familiar spaces without making them feel overly stylised.
The soundtrack carries the same sense of ease: Chota Sa Fasana opens the road to possibility, Kadam settles into introspection, and Saansein brings a deeper emotional release.
Together, image and music make the journey feel lived rather than merely watched.
There is a gentle shift in the characters from moving through the world to actually noticing it, and from noticing the world around them to confronting what they carry within.
What stays with the viewer is not one spectacular frame, but the cumulative feeling of travelling alongside these characters through an emotional and quietly restorative journey of rediscovery.
Time Out of Time
Ultimately, Karwaan leaves behind less a destination and more a different way of looking at the world – and perhaps at oneself.
Its roads, ordinary objects, unexpected conversations and fleeting pauses become reminders of how much can be missed when life is just spent rushing towards the next thing.
More importantly, the journey creates a rare distance from the routines, expectations and conflicts its characters have been carrying, giving them room to pause, observe and reconsider what they thought they already knew.
That is what makes the film especially rewarding for architects and designers. Its value lies not in spectacular buildings or definitive design lessons, but in its sensitivity to how people inhabit the world, adapt to both familiar and unfamiliar surroundings, and find moments of comfort, connection and reflection within them.
Personally, Karwaan is a film worth returning to. Its narrative’s warmth, unhurried pace, well-calibrated performances, music and visual attentiveness make it an easy journey to settle into.
For anyone willing to slow down with it, Karwaan is a gentle reminder that sometimes stepping away from the life we know is exactly what gives us the perspective to return to it with greater positivity, understanding, awareness and compassion.
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