Yaari,
dosti,
yaarana – there was a time when Bollywood routinely churned out films on this theme, and a foreigner studying India through Hindi cinema might have been misled into believing that only men form friendships here. By the turn of the century, the preferred label became “male bonding flicks”, which was a more honest, accurate description of this almost-exclusively-male genre.
The likes of
Dil Chahta Hai and
Rock On have finally begun making way for women, the most high-profile example of this evolution being Shashanka Ghosh’s
Veere Di Wedding (2018). I remember speaking to women friends who were as tickled as I was that
Kajol in Tribhanga (2021) | Netflix
When the movie star Anu sees her novelist mother Nayan comatose in hospital, she has a decidedly unsympathetic reaction. Perfect, snarls Anu, she’s in a silent zone.
At least it’s better than the time Anu shoves Nayan and tells her, I hate you, you are a sick woman.
Behind this seemingly irreconcilable estrangement is a complicated family history, forged by hard choices and unintended consequences. Renuka Shahane’s
Tribhanga is at its most affecting when it examines the spontaneous reactions of its characters to their circumstances. Constantly taunted by her oppressive mother-in-law and let down by her effete husband, Nayan (Tanvi Azmi) walks out of her marital home with her children Anu and Robindro.