This is a blog post from
There are about three conversations happening around the super-loved, superhit Kapoor and Sons(Since 1921) right now.
First, that it’s a delectable easy-charm, slice-of-life movie that takes the protagonists and the viewers not from A through Z, but to — let’s say — a T. Also, it’s a liner and not a submarine — it cruises along without diving deep. I agree with most of that, but wish it could have gone just a bit deeper; it would have been a “truer” film, like the director, Shakun Batra’s debut >Ek Main aur Ekk Tu , which does the opposite of Kapoor and Sons — it goes from A to T and then back to A: the protagonists don’t end up being together at the end, nor seem very likely to.
Next, how insanely good-looking >Fawad Khan is, especially shorn of the stubble from his Bollywood debut, >Khoobsurat — and people thought that was hot. Fawad has got most girls — and some guys — weak in their knees and other body parts. And there’s talk that just for this delightful import from across the border, we might finally let their cricket team win a World Cup match.
Finally, people are going to town about how sensitively the filmmakers have dealt with Fawad’s character, Rahul, being gay. (Did we hear those girls weeping and those guys whooping? Chill, that’s just his character — although he is married in real life.) The LGBT community especially seems ecstatic that the makers have shown gay without saying ‘gay’ — there’s no mention of the word, not even an indication (even the fuchsia feather boa in the family belongs to his dad) and Rahul isn’t portrayed as disco/Cher-loving or shirt-chasing. I think the makers could have gone better here too — while no one uses the G word, Rahul’s mom treats him, at least as soon as she comes to know of his “truth”, with the same disgust most queer people find themselves at the receiving end of. But portrayals of LGBT characters in our movies rarely go beyond those effete, pink-loving stereotypes, so this is at least two-steps-forward-one-step-back.
But I’d like to bring a fourth, and perhaps more discussion-worthy, conversation to the Burma-teak table. But before that, a bit of context-setting.
The great books, even the good ones — and by this I mean literature and not “racy, pacy reads” — have almost always ended sad.
Rahul and his younger bro, Arjun, are both writers. However, Rahul is the successful one and Arjun the struggler. Rahul’s second book has been a huge success — although his first tanked — and he’s presently working on the third. In fact, he seems to be doing well enough to come to his home-town, Coonoor, to scout for a bungalow to turn into an artists’ retreat. Arjun, in contrast, is struggling with more than just his writing. He’s recently given up his short-lived blog about Bollywood and is presently making ends meet as a part-time bartender. In his spare time, he is working on a book, his second one, after having given up the first because it “somehow” proved to be very similar to Rahul’s second/successful book. (Did Rahul sneak a peek and get “inspired”? For that, you’ll have to watch the movie.)
Setting aside their differences for a while, in the second half, the brothers begin talking about Arjun’s manuscript. Arjun shares that the publisher has asked him to change the ending as it’s not a happy one, but he is, um, not happy with having to do that. Why? Because he believes “books, or literature, should reflect real life — and real life is never happy.”
However, toward the end, as the movie moves toward its T point, we see Arjun reneging: he makes the book end positively. At the publishers’, when asked how he finally relented, he offers, “Based on someone’s suggestion…”, warmly recalling Rahul’s reflections to him (more about this later).
This seems to me a more primary point of discussion than how deep a movie should go, how lovely a lad looks, or how a gay guy can love other colours in the rainbow flag.
Source: Wikipedia
>The Iliad , which stands as the archetypal Greek Tragedy, is not just a story of human weakness, vengeance and destruction, but unabashedly ends on a lament. The only consolation for supporters of the hero Achilles is that his archetypal fatal weakness comes into play outside of the Iliad's events. The 1855 portrait pictured above is a work of Nikolai Ge and depicts Achilles mourning the death of his friend Patroclus.
A Bollywood remake wouldn't make for a box-office hit by a long shot.
The great books, even the good ones — and by this I mean literature and not “racy, pacy reads” — have almost always ended sad. From Homer to Shakespeare to Hardy to living authors, it’s like a defining trait of literature that it shouldn’t end joyous. And I believe this is a good thing: people read these books not so much to escape their pain, but to empathise with others in a parallel universe somewhere who are dealing with the same kinds of pathos. As we see our troubles equalled, or even surpassed, in literary characters, we are assuaged — kind of like a therapy session right at home, or wherever you choose to read. And while these characters are fictional, lit-lovers know that somewhere these are either alter-egos of the writers or amalgamated versions of people the writer has met or observed.
While I have read very little of Shakespeare and Hardy, and The Iliad not at all, let me talk about some of my favourite authors and books and more recent literature.
Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude , while mesmerising to read from the first Buendian (the family in the story) to the last, eventually ends up in loss for the family. As the second-last Buendian increasingly loses himself in academia, the last Buendian, the baby, loses his little life, Second-Last failing to pay attention to Last’s precarious situation. A century on, the family is back to solitude.
In Naipaul’s tender, tearful A House for Mr Biswas , there is almost no relief for Mr. B throughout the expansive tome. As he sees his third and final house slowly disintegrating, his life too trails away, at the ripe old age of… 46.
Even in Marquez’s ultimately-happy Love in the Time of Cholera , the lovers meet only after “51 years, 9 months and 4 days.” Many would say, where’s the joy in that?
Or take the recent DSC winners (an award given for South Asian writing, which seems to be going India’s way over the last few years, just like the Ms Worlds and Ms Universes once were). Cyrus Mistry’s >Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer deals with the many tragedies in the life of the titular khandhia, from his excommunication from his caste on marrying a woman “below” him to the death of his wife at a very young age. Even the most recent winner that I’m in the middle of now, Anuradha Roy’s Sleeping on Jupiter , deals with many dark and heavy themes: the not-so-holy doings of some (all?) godmen, the frustration inherent in most gay romances (the flavour of the season?), and the spirit-leeching deterioration of the faculties in old age. I’m yet to know how it ends, but it surely doesn’t augur well.
Many Bollywood directors make a great first movie. But it doesn’t make the tills go ting as it’s too “real. So, they change tack and make more “commercially viable” movies thereafter, which — not surprisingly — works.
So, if literature ends up being tragic yet triumphant, and he isn’t writing a book with a number in its title or a Hindu mythological figure as its hero, why does Arjun end up modifiying its ending?
The answer perhaps lies where it started — in our movies. Many Bollywood directors (no doubt, there are examples in other Indian cinemas too, but I am a Big Bolly Buff) make a great first movie — a movie from their heart and soul — but which doesn’t make the tills go ting as it’s too “real”, and so change tack and make more “commercially viable” movies thereafter, which — not surprisingly — works.
Ayan Mukerji made the wondrous Wake Up Sid , which despite all its acclaim at best only woke — rather than shook — the box office up. So, he moved to more commercial elements, such as a more saleable leading lady and foreign locales, and delivered the blockbuster >Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani .
Zoya Akhtar first gave us, (or me, as it’s my favourite film of all time), the rich, deep, engaging >Luck By Chance , which had layers upon layers of psychology, nuance, complexity, and then some. But apart from folks like me who watched it 15 times, it had little luck. So, she swerved to the big, vapid >Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara and then the bigger and only less vacuous >Dil Dhadakne Do .
Finally, and ironically, Shakun Batra himself. He debuted with, as I already wrote, the ruminative Ek Main aur Ekk Tu , where the hero-heroine remain ek mainaur ekk tu (I, on the one hand, and you, on the other), but never ek hum (the two of us): the heroine, Kareena Kapoor, feels they are each a nice individual but can’t be together, at least to her mind. Not surprisingly, the movie was seen by ek-do (one or two) people. And so, in Kapoor and Sons , Shakun had Arjun and Tia (Alia Bhatt) hooking up by the end. And perhaps, to be doubly sure, he made Rahul prefer men. (Oh, was that the real reason for the character being gay?)
To be fair, these directors might be attempting a golden middle. Answering a question about what book he was reading at the time ( Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull with Amy Wallace), >Shakun told The Hindu recently: “The book talks about finding the balance between telling the stories you have to tell and fighting the battle you have to fight… It gives a lot of perspective and also makes me feel that it is possible to not sell your soul and make a film that connects with people.”
Your first creative endeavour goes under. You don’t want the next to suffer the same fate. Any wonder then that in making its ending a happy one, Arjun makes a practical decision. He wants to be successful — and if this is the only thing stopping him — why not, in a manner of speaking, lower your ideals?
Now, to all the writers/creative souls out there: what would you do? Write (pen/direct) a real but less saleable story? Or a happy and more successful one? That is, would you write for the self, or for the shelf?
As you begin writhing over that, let me finally share the suggestion Rahul gives Arjun, which leads to the modified ending, “Because people find real life tough, they look for happiness in stories…”
Now what would you do?
Agonising, huh? Well, such is life. And I guess, literature.
