Life and Love through the Prism of Death
In the foreground of young death, the Sanya Malhotra starrer Pagglait (2021) presents a woman unwilling to become the meek, submissive picture of a suffering widow, instead finding an unusual ally to help her navigate inner conflict and chaos.
The first time we see Sandhya (Sanya Malhotra) in Pagglait, she is lying in bed reading condolence messages on her phone, quickly dismissing them as lazy copy-paste jobs. Her new husband had just died an early, tragic death. But Sandhya is impassive to the chaos engulfing the house. She has an increased appetite, and craves Pepsi and spicy wafers (“Masale wale chips”). She notices the banal inanities transpiring in the household and even consoles her mother, “Bas mummy kitna royogi?” (Enough mom, how long are you gonna cry?).
So surprising is her reaction to the death of her husband that Sandhya’s friend Naiza retorts, “Tum aise kyu behave kar rahi ho jaise kuch hua hi nahi?” (Why are you behaving as if nothing has happened?)
The sudden death of a young man—Aastik—leads to a big family reunion. The beats are instantly recognisable: incessant gossip in hushed tones, family members jostling for space in a house that seems full to the brim, hormonal teenagers forced to participate in the mess, drama and comedy over the rituals, financial concerns, tension between the old guard and the new blood. In many ways, Umesh Bist’s Pagglait is strikingly similar to Seema Pahwa’s directorial debut, also streaming on Netflix, Ramprasad ki Tehrvi. Both the films deal with the chaos and commotion of death and were even shot in the same haveli in Lucknow.
We wonder if this could be Sandhya’s way of dealing with the monumental sorrow of losing one’s partner; doesn’t restraint lend more poignancy to grief, especially when it is kept buried inside, like a festering wound before the final, dramatic release?
A stark difference between the two narratives, however, are the widows left behind in the face of death. In Ramprasad, the widow is an elder lady, broken by the demise of her husband. Pagglait’s Sandhya (Sanya Malhotra), on the other hand, seems peculiarly unmoved by Aastik’s death.
The past few years have seen a churning of sorts in Hindi cinema, as filmmakers of mainstream, commercial cinema, are turning their lens towards the Hindi hinterland. It’s the influx of a new breed of creatives, who through these stories are making an attempt to retrace their roots, while also lending a tinge of ‘authenticity’ to the narrative. With resonance from the audiences and box-office gains, the stories have multiplied, from the narrow lanes of Kanpur (Bala, Tanu Weds Manu), the decadent havelis of Lucknow (Gulabo Sitabo, Jolly LLB 2, Ramprasad Ki Tehrvi) and the mystic ghats of Varanasi (Masaan, Angrezi Mein Kehte Hai, Mukti Bhawan) have hit a chord with the critics and audiences alike, and given these Uttar Pradesh towns a new lease of life on the celluloid.
Pagglait evokes the same smaller town nostalgia. The wonderful aerial shot in the opening sequence captures Lucknow in all its glory. Rafey Mahmood’s camera gives you a quick tour of the city —the squeaky sound of a rickshaw, old havelis, an odd cow — before taking you to your final destination, Shanti Kunj, the setting where the narrative unfolds. However, the scene is elevated by making a subtle yet distinct reference to Lucknow’s rich ‘Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb’ by weaving together the call for azaan with the cityscape. In a deeply fractured political environment that marks contemporary India—and Uttar Pradesh in particular—a small filmmaking decision like this feels both rebellious and reassuring.
Bist is not interested in tokenism and further explores this political environment by placing the ‘other’ right in the middle of a joint upper-caste Hindu family. The segregation of tea cups, the refusal to eat with the Muslim character and the blatant displeasure of the family’s patriarch at her presence in the house (“Ghar ko shuddh rakhna hai”/ the house has to be kept pure) showcase the seething pettiness towards the minority community we are all too familiar with. It is humiliating, but it has lost its ability to shock. For a film set against the backdrop of death and the rituals that follow afterwards, this may seem like a superfluous sub-plot. But Pagglait is not concerned with the obvious. It propels you instead towards the peripheries to find the extraordinary amid the ordinary.
In the middle of it all is Sandhya, a young widow, facing loss without an external outpour of grief. We wonder if this could be Sandhya’s way of dealing with the monumental sorrow of losing one’s partner; doesn’t restraint lend more poignancy to grief, especially when it is kept buried inside, like a festering wound before the final, dramatic release?
But Sandhya is not numbed by pain. She is just indifferent. She is the same person who sobbed incessantly and didn’t eat anything for three days after the death of her cat. The point missed by the onlookers who cannot wrap their head around her unusual behaviour is this: How can she mourn the demise of someone she hardly knew? She is still an outsider to the Giri family—to the home of her in-laws. She still hasn’t adjusted to their ways (her discomfort with the Indian-style toilet) and certainly didn’t share an intimate bond with Aastik. Despite being man and wife, they hardly spoke to each other, hardly knew each other. Like many others, marriage was an obligation that she had to fulfill in the name of tradition and familial duty.
It is only when she uncovers a secret of Aastik’s past that something inside Sandhya truly changes. It is the first time in the film that she betrays signs of emotions and restlessness, sadness, anger, resentment come tumbling out together. She is at once, is caught by a sudden desire to nurture the emptiness gnawing inside her.
With an awakening of sorts, Sandhya sets out on a journey to finally get to know the man she was married to, and she does it by spending time with the most unusual ally—her husband’s former lover, Aakansha (Sayani Gupta)—who helps Sandhya navigate the inner conflict and chaos.
The truth is that you never lose a person at once; you lose them in pieces. The memories haunt you in the most unexpected ways, begetting seemingly-insurmountable grief along with them. Are you even the same person anymore? Do you not lose a part of yourself in losing a beloved?
In the hands of a less skilled writer, this could have turned into an over-melodramatic stereotypical sub-plot, but in Pagglait, we see a refreshing, albeit hesitant, sorority brewing between the two women. They shared the same man although in different ways. Sandhya learns that Aastik’s favorite colour was blue, which is why he never wore the shirt she bought for him. She discovers that he was not the ‘boring’ man that she assumed didn’t know how to love (‘Pyaar karna nahi aata’), but instead, a man whose heart ached for someone else. In tracing his language of love, she discovers her own.
This is the truly remarkable bit of Pagglait, a woman unwilling to become a meek, submissive picture of suffering bearing her misfortune with silent stoicism. Sandhya finally finds the courage to break the shackles of traditions and shun the life of conformism she is trapped into. The end of Aastik’s journey marks the beginning of hers.
Perhaps this is why the climax feels too heavy-handed. For a film that snubs familial bigotry and societal facade in the most unorthodox ways, the undulating fixation on the message of women empowerment almost seems counterproductive and inconsequential. Pagglait is peppered with moments that question the norm and expose the performative nature of mourning. The references to Sandhya’s increased appetite and the scene where she is seen devouring golgappas, for instance, counter the age-revered traditions that dictate widows only eat bland food.
Pagglait also made me think about the nature of grief, and how the society works under a desperate compulsion to box it into neat categories. Does the pain go away after the customary thirteen days of mourning (the ‘terhvi’)? The truth is that you never lose a person at once; you lose them in pieces. The memories haunt you in the most unexpected ways, begetting seemingly-insurmountable grief along with them. Are you even the same person anymore? Do you not lose a part of yourself in losing a beloved?
This was not the case for Sandhya, but those who insisted on the charade hardly knew the dynamics of her marriage. They move conveniently from mourning the dead to deciding the future course of action for the young widow, all while sipping endless cups of chai. The hypocrisy of the family members challenged by the warm, comforting presence of Nazia; while everyone elicits acceptable manifestation of grief from Sandhya, Nazia just lets her be.
It is not just grief, but also the institution of arranged marriage that undergoes scrutiny in Pagglait. Sandhya has an MA in English—a fact that holds no credence for anyone in the family. The purpose of the degree was only to find a suitable boy which she indeed found in Aastik, a man who earned a handsome salary enough for the both of them. Right at the outset, we see a loquacious aunt exclaiming, “Manglik nahi hai, Usha jiji ne janampatri milayi thi” (She’s not a ‘manglik’; Ushi had matched their horoscopes), as if attempting to save Sandhya from anachronistic customs of astrological matchmaking. The interactions between Sandhya and her mother lay bare the fate—the holy grail of matrimony—that await millions of girls as soon as they are born. In a particularly moving sequence, Sandhya irritably blames her mother for clipping her wings at childhood: she remembers a time when she fell off a bicycle, as a result of which her mother returned the cycle saying, “Langdi ladki se shaadi kaun karega?” (Who will marry a crippled girl?).
While everyone wants to sacrifice women at the altar of matrimony, making it seem like the only momentous event in a woman’s life, no one prepares for the tragedy that befalls Sandhya. What if you are unexpectedly robbed of the support system that sustains you? The fact that life is fragile is brought home in a simple yet moving manner. This in itself underlines the emancipatory overtones of the film making the sub-plot of Sandhya’s remarriage and the mayhem around insurance money look like unnecessary contrivances. In one instance, the soundtrack overshadows Sandhya’s inner voice as it slowly comes to its own. “Khawashien to karte hai, zindagi se darte hain”, sing the lyrics, but do they need to supersede Sandhya’s voice when we can already feel what she is going through?
The soundtrack is otherwise exceptional (marking singer Arijit Singh’s debut as a composer). Pagglait is also spearheaded by some stellar performances that get the tone and tenor of the big north-Indian family to a tee. Ashutosh Rana and Sheeba Chaddha are outstanding as the grieving heart-broken parents, who have lost their anchor in life. Raghubir Yadav is immensely watchable as the churlish patriarch who waxes eloquent about ‘sutak’ and ‘shuddhi’, only to flout those rules himself. Sayani Gupta makes a beautifully restrained appearance, and Sanya Malhotra infuses life into the conflicts of Sandhya, her eyes and body language equally emotive. The individual quirks of the family members and the familial dynamics, evocative and enjoyable as they are, sometimes relegate the truly remarkable aspects of the film to the margins.
Pagglait’s real strength lies in its ability to stage an unlikely awakening in the backdrop of death. It is about a woman finding the rhythm of her heart and life after years of conformism. It is about the comforting warmth of friendship that defies boundaries of religion and class. It is rumination on the self-serving nature of familial relationships, a commentary on the futility of forced participation in age-revered customs that have run their course.
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Harshita Murarka is a freelance writer and researcher based in Delhi. You can find her on Instagram: @nectar_in_a_sieve and Twitter: @HarshitaMurarka.
