Kapoor and Sons - Understated, Yet Emotional

One of the wonderful things about this movie is that no character in it is perfect.  They all have interesting, even darker, shades to them, just as all of us do.  The family is far, far from perfect, just like any of our families.  And yet, we come to like each of the characters in the movie quite a bit.  Especially the grandfather, Dadu (Rishi Kapoor), although he is too flamboyant, a bit like a peacock among pigeons.  However, we take him in stride as part of the mess that family and relatives are and can be. Maybe, especially because he is raucous, contradictorily, quietly so.  Although towards the end, the sudden bit of teary-eyed noise that he makes over the internet asking his grandsons to come back, is a little unconvincing. Yes it is after a death, and deaths change people, but I still felt that he would have done better doing a semi-naked jig with a young thing, that would have jolted his grandsons and forced them to come back and find out for themselves whether he has gone (completely) cuckoo. Would have been more in line with the character.  However.

The pigeons turn out to be kingfishers and bee-eaters. They each carry shadows, which inadvertently come out in the open when they all get together after a long time and stay home for a while.  Thank god almighty that it is not yet another Bollywood wedding that we are attending.  It is rather a more macabre situation of Dadu having had a heart attack that we are called hurriedly to. Just like this instance, I find much of the movie built around ordinary, usual middle-class family happenings and things and sink into it like into a bean bag with a sigh - death and heart attack, bickering over bills and money at the breakfast table, a father screaming at his younger son about not keeping his job, the seemingly perfect and responsible first child, the faded romance of middle aged parents hinting at a once-alive togetherness and harmony, sibling rivalry... In the middle of all this, bursts and moments of love, affection and connection - the quick hug that the mother gives her son, a shared look of understanding between them, the brothers starting to fight over who has their parents' affection but then suddenly laughing about the obvious reality that they both perceive, the grandfather's mischief with his grandsons (smoking weed, no less!), apple pie(!) and more, scattered across the film's duration.

I loved it that there were not primary emotions or themes that categorised the first and second half of the movie.  Although yes, the plot moved quite effortlessly, smoothly into conflict by the end of the first half, and the little moments and hints into relationships and characters gradually build up to this publicly disastrous breakdown wherein every person in the immediate family is furious or hurt about every other.  By "smoothly into conflict" (which sounds oxymoronic) I mean there was a logical sequence to the events and the movement into conflict did not look artificial and contrived. And so, while this sequencing took its time and got our attention, it somehow felt like, the resolution of conflicts, re-building of bridges and relationships, and life returning to a new normal, was not given enough space and work.  It all seemed too pat towards the end and a little too understated perhaps.  Despite this, it works, and I shed some tears and laughed a lot and felt much.

As a soppy, sentimentalist who wants happy endings all around, what I cant wrap my heart around is Harsh's (Rajat Kapoor) death.  Should we necessarily have some part of the ending sad?  Like in Shamitabh. Why was death so necessary for the conclusion of the film? That too when here, Rathna Pathak and Rajat Kapoor carry the burdens, the heavies and the lightnesses of their relationship with such aplomb, such sincerity, I feel their ache, that wispy thread of hope when they connect, the sense of utter hopelessness when the morning-after explodes in their faces, and then again, a tentative reaching out - the phone call, and then WHAM! why do film makers do that?

I felt much more for the older couple than the younger one, which is the one thing I have not mentioned at all until now - Arjun (Siddharth Malhotra) and Tia's (Alia Bhatt) romance. I somehow didn't feel the explicit need for a man-woman romance in the midst of the family drama (it already had its own romance - the larger kind), except that, hey, this is India, and this is Bollywood - what will we do without a woman to catch the attention of one of the protagonists and vice versa.  However, what can be said about it is that it is, like other parts of the movie, understated yet poignant in its own way.  It could also be that a Tia was needed to hold Siddharth to the place, to bring him back home again and also to bring out his softer side. Love / romance can do that.  And Alia Bhatt does a great job, carrying Tia's shadows and manifesting her own style of light.

The elder son's character is totally inspired! Fawad Khan's character is Rahul. I mean, Rahul! A name like that, and you've got to watch the movie to know why this character is a subversion of Bollywood.  Although, Fawad Khan takes some time to warm up to Rahul. His punch was greater in Khubsoorat, and it struck me that the mother and son duo was the same in that movie as well.

Speaking of subversions, I feel that there is much in this movie that subtly subverts Bollywood cliches while still being established firmly as popular, mainstream cinema. Bravo, Shakun Batra.

Break fast in a Bowl

The breakfast is supposed to be the king of meals, and it is said these days that we should go all out to break our fast sumptuously.

I follow an ayurvedic regimen for the most part, adapting and modifying it to suit current contexts and routines.  The ayurvedic principles advise us to have light breakfasts and dinners and a heavier mid-day meal. According to the ancients, a light breakfast or none at all if you please!  I have found through trial and error and experimenting that this does seem to work better for the overall state of health and well-being. 

Imagine you are just recuperating from a fever: you would have been having very light meals so as to ease and facilitate the digestion process when the body is weak.  At this point when you are recuperating, you wouldn't immediately load the body with rich and nutritious foods; rather you would up the scale of nutrition and fats gradually and according to how your body's strength picks up.  Breaking one's fast is something similar.  After many hours of sleep and rest, the stomach is empty, all food digested and the body is ready to eliminate what was not required / not digested by it (hopefully!).  Your body and its metabolism is waking up, and is yet not at its peak.  You ingest gradually as and how your body wakes up to its full metabolic activity.  If we have a heavy breakfast, I figure we would be overloading the system.

If we were to go by the daily doshas cycle, that is, kapha, pitta and vata - our breakfast and dinner time both plonk right in the middle of the kapha times of the day (6 to 10 am, and 6 to 10 pm) (aliens and otherworldly souls who dine at 11 pm, wake up at 10 am and so on are not included in this category, their rhythms are different and need independent attending to).  Eating heavily during the kapha time would actually build up more kapha in the body (and this also depends on what one is eating).  However, as Captain Jack Sparrow would have said, these are to be taken as guidelines - a generic guideline would be to eat light during the kapha-building time, and eat well during the pitta time, when the body's digesting capacity is at its peak (10 am to 2 pm).  The other pitta dominating time is also 10 pm to 2 am, however, I am sure this is not a time to be eating at all, leave alone eating heavily.  This is the time for the pitta to be working from the inside to clean everything and get the body ready for the next day.

Image from eatfeelfresh.com

There were times when I used to have a full-stomached, loaded breakfast and I couldn't go without it.  I couldn't bear the thought of going even a little hungry.  But then, following a consistent and regular yoga practice, the body's native intelligence took over.  I naturally started eating lesser and lesser during breakfast without being completely aware of it initially.  Later I tried various combinations and portions and arrived at my optimum.  Of course, this is a dynamic optimum and changes a little according to how much exercise and sleep I have had and the kind of activity I have been doing.  In any case, solid, grand breakfasting is a NO if one wants to feel fresh, active and light through the day. 

An Evening with Ganga

I am watching Ganga. She is her own adjective.  I am awed at times by her force and strength, soothed by her gurgling and crooning at other, filled now with her tranquillity, now mesmerised by her turbulence, and feeling blessed by her divine grace.  For she is the Bhagirathi and Alakhnanda, coming straight from Shiva's locks.  Emerging from majestic

While crossing the Ganga in a motorboat, Calcutta

heights, she plays and dances whimsically with those who dare to engage with her at that altitude.  She then meanders and surges, gushes and cascades, gurgles and swirls through people's lives, making stories and songs, creating life and love. She can flow calm stretches, a balm to tired travellers, or thrash rapids, unpredictable and challenging to adventurers, or boil whirlpools and terrorise the weak hearted. She can be aggressive, gentle, can have humility and humour, she can be serious and have fun.  Other lives and stories cant help but join her.  Yamuna, and Gomti and Kosi and Ghaghara unite with her, to flow inexorably towards their destiny.  Being her, she cannot but approach her freedom grandly.  She stretches herself out and forms the largest green delta before draining into the Bay of Bengal.  And there then, there is the peace and stillness of wisdom and harmony.  I was seeped into her beauty as I watched Ganga.   

Imagine my surprise, when I am watching this scene behind closed eyelids, that outside, Shri. Warren Senders speaks of his Guruji singing once like the waves crashing at the ocean.  For the visual of Ganga, the sensations and feelings of being near this mighty river and her entire journey, all at once, was consistent throughout the performance and rendition of Shri. Warren Senders. I am no technical expert of a Hindustani vocal concert.  All I know technically is that it started out with an Alaap (Is this right?) of Raag MaruBehag and ended with a Raag Bhairavi Thumri.  However, my experience was that of being filled with the sense and wonder of the Ganga. He was accompanied by two musicians, Shri. Chandrajeet on the Tabla and Shri. Anantaraman on the Violin, who waltzed right along with all his twirls and turns, and executed their own beautiful ones too.  They were hosted by and performing at a friend's place. (Radhika Rammohan and Uday Shankar, many thanks to you) 

(I was also delighted to later find a couple of light Hindi songs with the evening Raga, MaruBehag - Tum Tho Pyar Ho (this is confirmed by Google!) I feel that Yeh Jo Desh Hai Tera is also the same Raga but am not sure.)

Just as the Ganga has many hues and colours, so does our evening's grand seigneur.  He also works actively to increase awareness of the very real danger of global warming and climate change, and suggests and promotes ways to reduce carbon footprints at individual levels.  In his brief talk with the audience, he seamlessly drew connections from his music and the relevance of sustaining and continuing the tradition of the music to taking action on a day-to-day basis to handle the environmental crisis.  Brilliance carried ever so lightly - one of the funny moments was when at the beginning of the concert, he announced that the aircraft is going to take off and all electronic devices have to be put in flight mode!