We are all possessive of the people we love. That is, in fact, one of the defining aspects of love, because when we love someone, the very idea that they may love someone else, have an equally intimate relationship with some other person, embitters us to no end. It is especially relevant when the person we love happens to be a parent, or, conversely, a child. And unlike love for a spouse or a girlfriend/boyfriend, familial love is somehow more anchored, more ironclad, more bound. Blood is, after all, blood.
Recently, I saw some movies that bring out precisely these issues to the surface. "Listen Amaya"( directed by Avinash Kumar Singh), deals with the daughter ( Swara Bhaskar) coming to terms with her widowed mother ( Deepti Naval) falling in love with a man ( the charming late Farooq Sheikh ji), who has been a good friend to her.
"Memories in March" ( Dir: Sanjoy Nag), that beautiful portrayal of the conflicting emotions of a mother ( the eternally beautiful and elegant Deepti Naval, again) who has to deal with the shocking revelation that her son, who died in a road accident, was actually gay and was in love with his senior colleague (played to perfection by Rituparno Ghosh).
The third one was a chance discovery on You Tube on a rainy Saturday morning, "Titli" ( Dir: Rituparno Ghosh), that dealt with similar themes of the daughter Titli ( a very young but immensely talented Konkona Sen), who is a big fan of a movie star, played by the dashing and charming Mithun, is left embittered and betrayed when she discovers that her mom ( the beautiful Aparna Sen) and Mithun had been lovers a long time ago, and is simply unable to cope with the revelation.
All three movies explore a theme that is not seen very frequently in our cinema, in part because we really do not perceive our parents as separate,sexual beings. Also, we fail to see that in the throes of raising us and our siblings, our parents, especially our mothers, seem to lose a part of their individuality, and most of them hardly assert even a minimal longing for a space of their own, having molded themselves in ways that always criss-cross our own.
Titli's outright rejection of the very idea that her mother had been in love with the movie star she herself has idolized speaks volumes of the way children always assume that their parents are and were just that-parents, and not individuals with a life of their own. Amaya, though aware of her mother's loneliness and despite being very good friends with Farooq, is appalled when her mother tells her that she has decided to get married. As children, how selfish and myopic we become! On the other hand, as parents, we fail to understand that our kids harbor secret hopes and desires that are so different than our expectations of them. In India, this is even more so, as I myself have experienced. You are provided with the best education, are given access to the best books and media, you are lauded when you prove your individuality and uniqueness among your peers, but when it comes to choosing your career, your spouse, and even simple issues like when you want to take a stand with a particular ideology, you are expected to be safely conventional. But, that is another story altogether.
In all, it is great that there are still some film makers out there who pick these complex themes and portray the vicissitudes of life, at the same time do it so elegantly and artistically that it is sheer poetry to watch them.
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