CINEMA
It's still a love story
M.K. RAGHAVENDRA
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"Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna" reinvents tradition in the light of a globalising world.
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New elements: Break with tradition.
POPULAR cinema needs to address its audience in pertinent ways. It is a need for "pertinence" that sees it constantly incorporating new narrative elements. If this is acknowledged, the best critical option is, rather than "assess" a film, to identify its concerns — no small task because popular cinema is not realistic but takes the shape of a "collective daydream" (Sudhir Kakar).
Karan Johar's "Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna" (KANK) attracts attention because it seems to endorse adulterous relationships in an unprecedented way. It begins in New York with Maya's (Rani Mukherji) marriage to Rishi (Abhishek Bachchan). Maya is apprehensive but meets Dev (Shahrukh Khan), a footballer who tells her what marriage entails. They go their ways, though resolving that the parting will not be forever. Unfortunately, Dev is disabled in a road accident and becomes dependent on his wife Rhea (Preity Zinta) thereafter.
Story line
Rishi and Maya live with Rishi's father Sam (Amitabh Bachchan), a widower and jovial philanderer, while Dev and Rhea live with their son and Dev's mother Kamaljit (Kirron Kher). Dev and Maya meet again accidentally and, with their marriages losing lustre, commence a relationship. Sam and Kamaljit who are fast friends, come to know but they don't interfere. In fact the dying Sam suggests that Dev leave Rhea for Maya although Maya is Rishi's wife and his own daughter-in-law. In any case, the two marriages break up but neither Dev nor Maya knows that the other is free. Kamaljit remains behind with Rhea and her grandchild while Dev moves out. Maya becomes a schoolteacher and learns, only when she returns for her ex-husband's wedding, that Dev is still single. The film concludes with Maya catching Dev on the train to Toronto and the two being reunited.
It is apparently in its treatment of "family values" that KANK is most uncharacteristic. Popular cinema has not dealt with the transformation of the actual family because the traditional (or, rather, the "traditional-ideal") Indian family is the constant unit in narrative construction. Its subject is not the family as it is but the family as tradition has stipulated it should be — cemented by patriotism, by respect for one's elders and by devotion to God.
If the "traditional-ideal" family is a constant element, then deviations from "idealness" are anomalies that offer themselves for interpretation. The wife suspected of adultery ("Andaz", 1949) was an earlier deviation. The relationship in "KANK" is another anomaly inviting interpretation.
Anomalies, it can be argued, don't come alone and there will be those that lend moderation to others because, on the whole, the rules must be followed and conventions respected. The anomalies tempering the endorsement of adultery in "KANK" are, specifically, the narrative being deliberately confined to the United States — with no acknowledgement of India — and the absence of the symbols representing tradition — the mangalsutra, the patriotism and the religious fervour to name only three. The space of the narrative is deliberately emptied of the Indian Nation and Tradition to be appropriate for "globally induced" behaviour!
Foreign milieu
The foreign milieu in "KANK" is not the tourist destination of the 1990s cinema and New York is a place where Indians work and succeed. The song sequences on European roads with amused white onlookers embarrassed Indian sophisticates but they had the manifest purpose of distinguishing the Indians as different.
"KANK" and the other new films shot in Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok do not include such sequences. The songs, if any, are on the soundtrack but the protagonists conduct themselves discreetly like New Yorkers or Thais. Even in "DDLJ" (1995), a story about non-resident Indians, there was the sense of Indians abroad being set apart from the locals and India remaining "home".
"KANK" has several other new elements: The mangalasutra is replaced by the wedding ring as an emblem of loyalty; a "father" studies feminine behinds. But the motif still recognisable — despite the disguise — is the venerated parent. Sam seeks out young women but he has a place in his heart only for his late wife. Rhea has no eyes for anyone but her spouse and she, significantly, is also a mother.
The mother in Hindi cinema, as acknowledged, is the site of virtue. Hence, Kamaljit remaining with Rhea (and her grandson) rather than leave with her son is like Ravi saying, "Mere pass Maa hai!" in "Deewar" (1975).
Interestingly, when Dev runs into Maya for the first time after her wedding, she is with a little girl who turns out to be someone else's daughter. Karan Johar is being mischievous here — by appearing to make a potential adulteress out of a mother!
The space of the narrative in "KANK" has been emptied of the Nation and can be interpreted as a global space. "KANK" seems to respond to the space in a straightforward way — by accepting it wholly and even jettisoning tradition. But if tradition is vacating the narrative space, all is still not lost because the conduit through which the ethical values inculcated by it pass into society — the mother — remains steadfastly with the next generation.
Vulnerability
After all this has been said, "KANK" remains the story of a love once disallowed by popular cinema. Still, when it permits Dev and Maya to embark on their own, it does not suggest that the social fabric is under threat in any way. "KANK" is, rather, asserting that the fabric is secure despite the temptations. Apart from Shahrukh Khan and Rani Mukherjee suggesting vulnerability convincingly, Dev's being disabled — he hobbles through the film — reassures us that he is not the triumphant hero.
Where Rhea and the others live in opulence, Dev moves into a bare apartment, the likes of which may not have housed a film hero after 1992. Dev and Maya have little except each other, and that is an anomaly in a cinema where one must be rich to be in a story.
"KANK" is a response to the global milieu fast closing in around us but where exactly does it stand? I believe it is the first Hindi film to welcome it openly even while reassuring its constituency that, regardless of the transformations that will unavoidably be experienced, what is essential to tradition will be carried forward. The film is sympathetic to those who break traditional taboos but it also suggests that they will not be left with very much to hope for.
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