"Did you get to watch the movie? How was it? I couldn't get it recorded" said my friends's SMS. "It was good. The ad breaks were tolerable. The movie was actually over by 10:45" I replied back.
Good. That was the adjective I used to describe the movie. That means I didn't think that watching it was a waste of time. But that also means that it somehow fell short of the expectations that were built by the ooh-and-aah of all the reviews that I had read on the net. Of course, that isn't the movie's fault.
To start with, the movie deals with a new subject - not the usual boy-meets-girl-and-they-fall-in-love or angry-man-out-on-a-revenge-spree that make up most of the Hindi movies. And the subject is not unfamiliar to many from my generation who had homemaker moms who never had any reason to converse in English. So we have Shashi, hmmm, Godbole. A Maharashtrian lady with a name Shashi was a bit difficult to stomach. She is said to be from Pune. But somehow the way the family is depicted doesn't somehow sound convincing. Of course, by that I don't mean that they should have been shown to speak a sentence or two in Marathi every now and then (aka Pavitra Rishta!). But I guess there are a few aspects of any Indian culture that clearly mark them as belonging to this community or that. It wasn't apparent here.
So Shashi doesn't understand or speak English. And that's what makes her a laughing stock of her husband and daughter. She understands this but the feeling is swept under the carpet because there simply is no time or luxury to examine your feelings and deal with them. Then comes the news that her America-based niece is getting married. For whatever reason, Shashi has to travel all the way to America by herself. She manages to clear the hurdles of visa interview and then immigration well. And then, she is made aware of her inability to converse in English once more, in a very painful way, just when she is feeling confident of her ability to manage on her own in a foreign land - without knowing the local language. A woman can do almost anything - she simply has to make up her mind about it. Shashi does exactly that. She joins a course that promises to teach people to speak English in just 4 weeks.
This is where I stopped believing in the movie. English in 4 weeks? Come on now. Oh, I know! Shashi had no reason to stay back in "the US" for more than a few weeks. So the course had to be of a short duration. But it also means that her progress in those 4 weeks is directly at odds with the fluent speech that she gives in the end.
Of course, that's what I feel if I listen to my brain. But if I throw logic out the window, then the movie gives a message that's very relevant to the patriarchal society that is rather emotional than practical when it comes to family and relationships - love alone is not sufficient, there needs to be respect too.
Thank you Gauri Shinde for that! And hats off to Sridevi for essaying the journey of an English-challenged homemaker to a confident one. I do hope that you get to play more such meaningful roles in your second inning. Welcome back!
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