Engulfed in a hoodie twice my size, I walked slowly. I chose the wetter part of the beach. I like leaving behind footprints; they look incredibly cinematic in the warm light spilling over from prime waterfront hotels. If I were in a movie, a brooding Maula song would punctuate this reflective phase. But that night, a familiar score filled my senses: Anupam Roy’s sarod theme from Piku.
I knew why.
Two separate faces of Bhashkor Banerjee (Amitabh Bachchan) — Piku’s (Deepika Padukone) needy, motion-obsessed, hypochondriac father — had haunted me all day.
A 45-year-old man had spent 15 years taking care of his old man. The son had become a pale shadow of his former self. He began to battle loneliness with a bottle. The paranoid father slept with a rifle next to his bed. The house reeked of wasted adulthood and broken dreams. I couldn’t remember the last time I met the son, my once-jovial maternal uncle. Just as he was about to visit, his father, my retired Army Major grandfather, fell ill again.
He had sensed the trip. If Bhashkor had not died a satisfied death after meeting Rana (Irrfan Khan) — if a widower hadn’t freed his child at the last possible moment — this would have been the sorry outcome. I found myself wishing for one life to end for another to begin again. At this juncture, movies become poetic embellishments of life’s inherent inadequacies.
The other face lay closer to home. “Stop holding me back!” I had screamed before hanging up on my father. We live in different cities, but the lack of proximity is futile. He couldn’t pay his bill online, a habitual failure that had resulted in my evening being flooded with panicked phone calls. Another day, it’d be a malfunctioning ATM machine or mistyped password. Like Banerjee, he was perfectly capable of handling these situations. And, like the crabby ageing patriarch, he chose not to.
Shoojit Sircar and Juhi Chaturvedi’s unnerving ode to the Indian parent had made me cagey. His functional vulnerability had lurked at the back of my mind. I couldn’t figure out if it was his measured dependence or weakening health that was beginning to upset me. Or maybe it was the lack of respect for my schedule. It’s not easy to see your childhood hero grapple with the mundaneness of mortality. It’s almost annoying, like discovering that tooth fairies don’t exist.
Whatever the case, it made me sound as resentful and irritable as Piku. I imagined his life — and, in turn, my life — five years from now. Maybe I’d be forfeiting companionship in favour of arranging medicine boxes, and seeking nurses willing to tolerate septuagenarian tantrums. Maybe senility would compel him to brazenly advertise my (lack of) love life to strangers. A bleak future, but perhaps a necessary one.
An airplane shook me out of my self-pitying reverie. I looked up above the ocean; a different kind of montage filled my senses. Like a book, turning pages, fatherly images of Sahabji (Rajesh Khanna in Swarg ), Raj Malhotra (Amitabh Bachchan in Baghban ), B.V. Pradhan (Anupam Kher in Saraansh ) and George Banks (Steve Martin in Father Of The Bride ) flicked by rapidly.
At the forefront stood one face: the kind, unconditional eyes of the late Farooq Sheikh, telling his son Bunny ( Ranbir Kapoor ) to go live his life in Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani . “ Baap kaun hai ?” he reminds Bunny, who reluctantly accepts his dad’s selflessness. He will miss the boy and long for him, and pass away in isolation. But he won’t imprison his young spirit.
This is my father too. He gives without being asked. He senses without being told. The life he occasionally interrupted was also the life he built. He wasn’t holding me back; he was just preparing to let go. Every one of these personas is an indirect descendant of Thakur Baldev Singh (Amrish Puri) from Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge . “ Jaa Simran Jaa… ” means much more than three words. It’s more about that hand loosening its grip. Some take longer than others.
My phone rang again. “Online procedures are easy, Papa…” I started, calmly. This was my way of hugging him.
I made a mental note to visit my uncle. More than his withering Bhashkor, it was he who, perhaps, needed a Rana (Rani?) in his life.
The writer is a freelance film critic, writer and habitual solo traveller
