It’s Sunday morning in the upper-middle class Pune home of Ms. Astekar and Mr. Deshmukh. Their only offspring, a son, Alok (Amey Wagh), has just arrived home after partying the night before. He is earlier than usual, the mother observes. The father, back from his morning walk, knocks on the door. Unlike Alok he doesn’t carry the keys to the home. “Why doesn’t he … ? It’s just his male ego,” Alok argues. The mother dismisses him and opens the door; we see the playful father (a brilliant Sachin Khedekar) standing outside, excitedly talking about a big stone he has brought back from his walk. There’s a father, there’s a stone; but the image is anything but of a Stone Age patriarch.
Nuanced portraits
From here on, in his new Marathi film Muramba, a finely observed tale of an urban, millennial relationship, director Varun Narvekar subverts every traditional trope and theme of a typical romcom. Muramba is that sweet-sour dish made of fruit (mostly, gooseberry) by preserving it in sugar syrup till it permeates the fruit. Narvekar finds this process akin to the “maturing” of a relationship—both require their own sweet time. “In a personal relationship, these days, because of social media’s impact, we desire quick result[s]: if a person doesn’t make us happy, we try to break up with them. Only our parents know what exactly is needed for relationship [to grow]. They have been in a relationship for last 30 years and only they can tell us how to let a relationship mature,” explains Narvekar, on being asked the reason behind the title. “Also, I wanted a word that would capture the spirit of the family, especially that of the father. Muramba has that musicality in it.”
Alok’s father turns out to be liberal, progressive and a feminist. He lends a hand in the kitchen; has helped his tenth-grade pass housewife become self-sufficient in little ways; and has also helped her understand that Alok has a girlfriend. The parents don’t only just know about Indu, Alok’s girlfriend (played by YouTube star Mithila Palkar), they know her very well. And the same goes for Indu’s parents; we meet them in a short scene where her father is working in the kitchen while her mother is on the Mac.
Bridging the gap
Among other unusual things communicated on that usual dosa-for-breakfast Sunday is the news that Alok has broken up with Indu. For his mother (lovely Chinmayee Sumit), it’s like Alok has called off the wedding (Indu was already a daughter-in-law for her). She is just trying to grapple with his son’s idea of relationships: once Indu was a friend, then a special friend, then girlfriend and now, suddenly, nothing. In one terrific scene, when Alok talks back to his mother as she expresses her concern and shock after learning how alcohol is commonplace at office parties, the father sits beside Alok calmly and tells him how it’s he who is failing to understand his mother. Zoya Akhtar (director of the dysfunctional family drama, Dil Dhadakne Do ) would have loved this neat subversion of how Indian parents are represented. Here they actually talk to their kids.
Alok’s parents are curious to know the reason for the break-up that Alok only has only male ego-riddled excuses for when questioned. It’s the father again who decides to discreetly plan his patch-up with Indu. It's refreshing to see Mr. Deshmukh do that not only as a father but also as someone from the generation that finds millennial relationships frothy and frivolous. “Our father’s generation was influenced by the angry young man, RD Burman’s music, even Hollywood films. They feel the need to give freedom to their children because they didn’t get it from their parents,” Narvekar believes.
Modern love
The fun first-hour of this single-day story—that keeps cutting back to the past in an anti-climactic fashion to show what went into the break-up—gives way for the meditative second hour that spells out the insecurities in a relationship. Alok, despite being a gold medalist in MBA, runs away from job interviews because he fears being rejected.
Imtiaz Ali’s Tamasha comes to mind for it is the only popular film that came close to an examination of career-related insecurities in a relationship. But, while Ali’s spiritual approach told us that only love can help you overcome insecurities, Narvekar tells the story another way: it’s only once you have shared your fears can you be in love.
Also, the criticism against Tamasha, that the female character there comes across as too perfect, is touched upon here in a refreshingly different manner. When Alok, finally, finds faces up to his guilt and accepts his mistakes, Indu reveals to him that she too has her own set of fears. The characters may come from an upper class background but their fears are rooted and real, their conflicts are internalised.
When both—the boy and the girl—have their own share of fears, why did Narvekar choose to tell only the boy’s side of the story, why is it about his coming of age? “Because I am a male director. That’s the only reason,” he says. “I wanted to tap into the male ego and male insecurities. The observations that I wanted to make about male-driven society, I thought I could explore that only through Alok’s character.” Fair enough, but we hope that someone is listening to the girl as well.
