Over the last decade, as I’ve morphed from young adult into reluctant adult, I’ve lost both sets of grandparents. I grew up with them occupying different corners of the same town. All four died separately in their sons’ care, in a city away from their own homes. Yet, I haven’t participated in a single funeral. I haven’t mourned any of their deaths. I didn’t feel – sadness, nostalgia, pain, grief – any of the four times.
The one time I did feel, I was 19 years old. But my sorrow assumed the selflessness of second-hand sympathy – for my parent who had lost a parent. I was closer to the age at which I didn’t know my grandparents’ real names. I was nearer to a time in which they were my weekend guardians. I was young enough to remember their monikers without recognising the inherent linguistic nuances — “dadaji” was one full word; it wasn’t until later I learned the formal significance of the suffixes “ji” and “ma” — and not old enough to employ those memories as a backstory in the film of my future.
In short, I was almost still a kid, whose idea of masculinity had nothing to do with abandoning the sounds of adolescence. The kind of kid who, in the first act of a coming-of-age biopic, is subtly protected by his grandparents when his parents are at war. The kind of kid who, embarrassed by the sight of an old couple surprising him with a home-cooked meal at school, hastily ate at the gates so that they weren’t seen in the vicinity of the classrooms. The kind of nuclear-family child who didn’t yet know that he would grow into a perplexed man for whom “grandparents” were merely a phase of evolution.
Back then, I wasn’t the whole movie; I was the jumpy “child artiste” in other adult movies. Something like young Jamie (Iain Armitage) is, in the Ritesh Batra-directed Our Souls At Night . The film is about his lonely grandmother, a widowed Addie Moore (Jane Fonda), and her isolated neighbour, Louis Waters (Robert Redford) — and their odd small-town companionship. Jamie, a product of a broken marriage ignited by Addie’s troubled son (Matthias Schoenaerts), is sent to his grandmother for the summer. He unwittingly fuels the old timers’ blossoming romance by making Addie and Louis combine to distract him from his irreversible domestic situation. He makes them feel like a team, and therefore a stable couple who’ve had the fortune of circumventing the curse of long-term familiarity. Jamie connects to them because they’re closer to his age in the circle of mental life. He is the only soul that doesn’t judge their “unorthodox” arrangement.
Jamie’s need for care allows them to enjoy the frills of secondary parenthood without the burden of primary cultivation. As a result, they feel “relevant” enough to love, and live, again. And even though the child is only ever acquainted with Addie in times of crisis – she even moves in with her son to aid Jamie’s uninterrupted childhood – one can sense that she is an ageless superhero for him. Superheroes have no obvious weaknesses, which is why Jamie might never notice how her eyes light up at the prospect of new company, or how her face falls once her foster “duties” are over. She could well become a prologue when his story truly begins. She could well be a fleeting thought when he becomes the film.
Someone like a seven-year-old Olive Hoover (Abigail Bresnan, in Little Miss Sunshine ) feels horrible when her grandfather (Alan Arkin) dies on a family road trip because, for her, he is still her funny “grandpa,” and not a foul-mouthed heroin addict named Edwin. She isn’t old enough to understand how inappropriate, and human, he is. Abigail will grow up with fond memories of him as an integral part of her formative years. She is too young to forget him.
The closer we move to becoming parents and full-time caregivers, the further away we move from the privilege of being cared for. This is why movies usually depict a platonic bond between grandparents and children, with parents as the grumpy party poopers. The old and young virtually occupy the same boat — bearing sails of dependence and fragility – as opposed to the middle-of-the-road “adults” in charge of easing their futures.
The Indian joint-family culture, often reflected in various backdrops of its dysfunctional-household cinema, particularly thrives on this motif.
In Shubhashish Bhutiani’s Mukti Bhawan , the narrative primarily explores the equation between an adult son (Adil Hussain, as Rajiv) and a dying father (Lalit Behl, as Daya). The only easygoing relationship bereft of tension and resentment is between Rajiv’s teenaged daughter, Sunita (Palomi Ghosh), and Daya; they’re more like giggly friends, barely hindered by the label of a descending bloodline. Daya dies before Sunita has a chance to outgrow him. She will cry at his funeral.
In Kapoor & Sons (Since 1921) , we sense a similar bond between the brothers (Fawad Khan, Sidharth Malhotra) and their “cool” dadu (Rishi Kapoor), while the bitter parents remain at loggerheads. But as soon as life begins to hit them harder, a heartbroken Dadu fades away deeper into the background. They don’t think twice before leaving the family home after a showdown; all Dadu can do is watch them come and go.
Harpreet Singh Bedi (Ranbir Kapoor) in Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year is an exception. He is irreversibly bound to his grandfather (Prem Chopra) even as he finds his feet, because the early loss of his parents might have upset the foundation of the generational pyramid. Without someone in between, Harpreet naturally inherits the ancient man’s simple “outdated” values — eventually the charming USP of the film – while his accelerated ambition is aimed towards the fact that he has no time to transition from receiver to custodian. The absence of Harpreet’s folks forces P.S. Bedi to forfeit his grandparenthood and the boy to advance his parenthood. Hence, they must remain together even as they grow apart.
For most others, it takes years to realise that grandparents are the grassy playgrounds preceding a highway peppered with seedy motels. Harpreet keeps returning to the ground, and may even “feel” strongly when it turns into Grandpa Bedi’s burial site. Such movies trigger waves of guilt within me for developing hard enough to move forward. They make me wonder — very selfishly — if maybe I’d have processed the concept of grandparents more intimately if they hadn’t outlasted my immaturity.
Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that the only one I have recurring dreams of is my paternal grandmother. She was the first to fade away. She died my hero, while the others lived long enough to become a footnote.
