A refreshing tale about parents
Heroism is in the eyes of the beholder. Priyamvada Kaushik gazes proudly at her son Nakul even when he’s only reading out Tambola numbers to her friends. Nakul is bored stiff, yet customarily announces each number quirkily: the number 7, for instance, turns into “MS Dhoni number 7.” When his girlfriend calls, he looks up to see not only his mother glaring suspiciously, but all the neighbourhood aunties. Like many an Indian son, he has his hands full with mother figures.
Amit Ravindernath Sharma’s Badhaai Ho is a fine film about how hard it is to accept the unfamiliar, no matter how positive it is. The Kaushiks are a Delhi family. Their flat is government-allotted, with curtains matching the sofas and Hanuman stickers everywhere. Priyamvada is pregnant. It’s the most-cheered news a married woman can give an Indian family, but she is too middle-aged, and too entrenched in the middleclass, to celebrate or be celebrated.
Her beloved Nakul is the most torn. How can he imagine his parents doing it? While Nakul’s dejection might seem overdone, he faces a giant realisation: despite his marketing job, his affable demeanour and his smart girlfriend, he is not as progressive as he imagines. This film gently asks us to wonder if we are.
Ayushmann Khurana is great as Nakul, and his anger and his awkwardness feel very real. As his girlfriend, Sanya Malhotra sparkles in a couple of scenes, but this film is not about them.
Badhaai Ho is, refreshingly and triumphantly, about the parents. It belongs to Neena Gupta’s Priyamvada, nicknamed Babli, luminous even when exhausted, talking with her eyes as she looks at her husband fondly or at her children longingly. It belongs to Surekha Sikri, who plays a fierce, frequently immovable mother-in-law. It belongs to Sheeba Chadda, playing a socialite who looks down at the absence of an apostrophe.
Most of all, it belongs to Gajraj Rao. Jitender Kaushik, a ticket examiner, writes poetry under a restless pen name. He’s a modest man, stunned by his newfound position (among menfolk of family and locality) as an icon of virility. He considers growing a moustache, but Priyamvada disapproves and — as demonstrated to us by the way he flicks a bit of mango from her chin, reads rhymes to her on a rainy night, or simply the fondness with which he looks at her — he loves her truly. Now that’s a hero.