Memories in March (2011)

2011
Directed by: Sanjoy Nag
Music: Debajyoti Mishra
Starring: Deepti Naval, Rituparno Ghosh, Raima Sen

This is another of the films that was recommended to me a long time ago by a friend whose taste runs similar to mine. I put it on my list of 'to-watch' films, and then, with one thing and the other, never got around to watching it until recently. I did think about watching it many times, but themes of death and loss were hard for me at the time. Eventually, I did watch it, and I'm glad I did.

Babu/Siddharth calls his mother, Arti (Deepti Naval) to talk to her about a party that evening. His advertising agency has won six awards, and he is hoping that he is one of the lucky ones. He signs off saying he will call her later that night; only, fate has other plans.

 

His voice still rings in his mother's ears as she travels to Calcutta the next morning. She is met by her son's colleague, Sahana Choudhary (Raima Sen) who takes her to the crematorium where her other co-workers have assembled.  

There, she is introduced to Ornab Mitra, the creative director of the agency where her son worked. After the funeral, he drops her to Siddharth's house. Her grief is rigidly under control and the conversation is as awkward between the two strangers, as are the silences. He hands her Siddharth's belongings including his cell phone and laptop, and promises to send her the car for her use the next day.

Siddharth is everywhere - in her memories of his calls and his letters, in his belongings spread around his house, in other people's narratives. She is alone with him, and her grief, and her unanswered questions regarding his death.

The next day, when Sahana arrives with lunch, she provides some answers. That Siddharth had imbibed too much at the office party that night, they were all high... Arti can make no sense of it all. It was an office affair; shouldn't there have been some decorum? How did his friends allow him to drive home alone? Sahana resents that accusation - there were three office cars waiting to drop them all back home. Siddharth insisted on driving home despite their warnings.  

Arti asks to be taken to the accident spot and Sahana takes her; there, she bursts out with questions that plague her. What was Siddharth wearing that night? What was his hurry? At 2 in the morning, the roads would have been empty. How often had she warned him, go slow, go slow. He never listened, and now...

Ornab meets them there, and it is through him that Arti gets her ex-husband's phone number. No one has yet informed him of his son's death. 

The next morning, Arti goes to the agency. There, she signs his insurance papers (she is the nominee), and is taken to his desk. Unfortunately for her, it has already been assigned to a new copywriter. She handles that with characteristic restraint, but is taken aback when Ornab asks her for a day to hand over Siddharth's personal belongings, including the pictures on his softboard. When she breaks down, Ornab tells her she is being extremely melodramatic. A distraught Arti leaves the office, followed by Sahana. Arti's anger leads to a revelation that is even more shocking to her than her son's death. Siddharth and Ornab were lovers.

She is almost in denial at first. "Do you know how many girls used to drool over him in Delhi?" she asks Sahana. "Yes, but did he drool back?" Sahana asks. "No, probably because he felt they were not up to the mark." 

Sahana shares another bit of personal information. When Siddharth first joined the office she had had a huge crush on him. Everyone knew, including Siddharth, but he never responded. Arti is sure that Sahana should have waited, for after all, these things take time. Sahana demurs. She did wait. Until, one day, three months later, Siddharth took her out to dinner, and told her about Ornab. Arti is shocked. Her son, Siddharth, actually said that?!

The next morning, Ornab comes to visit her, bringing with him Siddharth's belongings. The silence stretches awkwardly until Arti breaks it by accusing Ornab of seducing her son. She is taken aback when Ornab asks her what she would say if he told her it was the other way around.  Her accusations rankle nevertheless, especially when she accuses him of having deserted her son after he had had his fun. His outburst as he leaves gives Arti a glimpse into his never ending pain.

Later that night, as she looks through Siddharth's phone, she comes across a message he had composed about his relationship with Ornab, but never sent. In it, he confesses to drafting and redrafting the message but never actually sending it because he is afraid of upsetting her.

When Ornab comes the next day to hand over Siddharth's passbook and to take his bag back, she invites him in. Very reluctantly, he agrees, but it is not as he fears. There is a definite thaw, even though she is striving to come to terms with this new knowledge.  

In a series of conversations and dinners together, she comes to understand Ornab better, and through him, her Siddharth; and even though there are squabbles and disagreements and sadness, there is also laughter and shared warmth. To the extent that they are able to joke about Arti not having to seduce Ornab, and how she could have 'normalised' them when Ornab visited her with Siddharth as they had intended to, before the latter died.

Finally, it is time for her to leave, and as Ornab writes on Siddharth's FaceBook account, "If I have to go away, can I leave a little bit of me with you?" 

It is perhaps only human to respond to tales of loss. Made mostly in English (with Hindi and a bit of Bengali, thrown in), Memories in March  is as much an ode to love and loss, as it is about wanting to be accepted by a society that sees you as deviant for just being yourself.  

Memories in March deals with one character's homosexuality, and another's coming to terms with it, even though she has no way of getting answers. It deals with the initial shock and grief of knowing that someone you love is 'different', of learning that what you thought of as an aberration that can be cured, is in fact, natural, and as valid as any relationship that 'normal' people have, of accepting that homosexuality is just another form of sexual orientation - not 'different', not 'a choice', certainly not a 'lifestyle'.    

The theme of homosexuality in Hindi films is not unknown. Unfortunately, most films that deal with this theme, either play it for laughs, or use it for titillation/shock value. It is a rare film (Onir's My Brother Nikhil comes to mind) that deals with it as normal, a sexual orientation that just is. 

An almost-lyrical script (Rituparno Ghosh himself), a sensitive, sparse direction (Sanjoy Nag), and a really wonderful score (lovely songs!) is elevated by three consummate performances - Deepti Naval, as the mother who has to deal not only with her son's death, but also the unexpected (and to her, shocking) revelation about his love life; Raima Sen, the girl who loved the son intensely but has to deal with rejection; and lastly, Rituparno Ghosh as the son's mentor and lover. 

One of the few openly gay celebrities in films, Rituparno fits snugly into the skin of Ornab. He is a reasonably competent actor most times, and as Ornab, there are flashes of brilliance. Especially the scene where he breaks down for the first time. As he refuses to give Arti her own picture back, he confesses that it is through the snapshot that he first 'met' his Siddharth's mother. He knows all about her - where she studied, what she is, how she wears long-sleeved blouses and loves Tussar saris... he will keep the picture because it is of his Siddharth's mother, and because while she looks like Arti, she is not her. She is much more gracious than Arti can ever hope to be.

Deepti/Aarti, who was very close to her son, Siddharth, is shocked that he had kept something so important from her. Like all mothers who assume that their sons (and daughters) are straight until they come out as gay, she too wishes that she had known about her son's sexual preferences before - so she could have had him treated. The reaction is normal, but saddening. (Why is this still such a prevalent attitude?) It is even more frightening, perhaps, because she is educated. So when she asks Ornab whether it was her negligence that led to Siddharth's 'abnormality', you flinch. However, as she herself admits, she is a very conservative woman.

Deepti Naval's performance is absolutely mesmerising. She is so contained, so repressed almost; it's only her eyes that give away the depth of her grief. 

 Watch the scene where she finally breaks down in private, almost hiding her tears even from her own self. (Was it very cold, Babu, with all that ice? she asks; her son hated the cold.) It makes you mourn her disappearance from acting. While Raima plays the catalyst who brings out hitherto hidden secrets into the open, it is Deepti's Aarti and Rituparno's Ornab who are trapped together in a dance between a shared sense of loss and a resentment for what was not shared. 

The film is restrained, perhaps too restrained for an audience that is used to seeing emotions overflow the screen. Even the awkward relationship between the mother, and the son's lover is handled with just the right touch. Siddharth (a character who never appears on screen, but still pervades the entire movie) is dead, and they have all loved him in their own ways. So when Raima's Sahana breaks the wall of secrecy, everything blows open at once. (It is a very poignant scene, more so for what is left implied than what is said.) 

The film unfolds at its own pace, each scene delicately detailed. Not everything is shown, but it is all the more powerful for being implied. It is almost as if the film is building a glass wall around the characters' and their loss - we are but mute spectators, and when the grief does explode on screen, albeit rarely, the shock we feel is even greater. There is a scene where Ornab asks Arti what is more unacceptable - that Siddharth is no more, or that he was gay. Arti is conflicted - perhaps it is the fact that he never told her even though they were so close. And however hard she tries to understand, she doesn't think she could ever come to terms with the fact that her son was gay. It subtly underlines just how much gays need their families' acceptance, even more than they need society's. The pathos is as constrained as the performances are, and it is to the actors' credit that they brought out the delicate nuances with such effect.

Memories in March  is about the detritus that death leaves behind. It makes you question beliefs that have been enshrined in stone - this is what relationships are, this is what they should be... those beliefs cry out to be destroyed. With all its flaws (and yes, there are a few), Memories in March is a film worth watching for its realistic and sensitive portrayal of a relationship that sadly, even today, is considered outside the norm. Thankfully, that is changing. Too slowly perhaps for the many homosexuals out there who are still forced to hide who and what they are, but change is happening. And films like Memories in March are important in that they force society to see homosexuals as no different from them. Through its characters, and their interactions with each other, the film attempts to address (and redress) existing gay stereotypes and gender roles and the rampant homophobia that prevents gays from leading lives that are true to their selves. And just for that, it deserves plaudits.

Memories in March reminded me of the haunting song Mera kuch saaman tumhare paas pada hain…mera voh saaman lauta do from Gulzar's Ijaazat because this forms the backbone of the story. Behind a tragic tale of loss and grief, it puts together another layer of what memories consist of and who has the right to these memories. These two strands of the story blend to become one towards the end, forging new bonds between a grieving mother and her son's gay lover and the girl who loved him selflessly.
Arti Mishra (Deepti Naval) comes from Delhi to Kolkata when her only son Siddharth dies in a car accident. As she tries to grapple with the news, alone in his flat, haunted by the e-mails and SMSes he sent, which are narrated in a voice-over, she is shell-shocked when one of his colleagues Shahana (Raima Sen) tells her that he was gay and in a relationship with his boss Ornob Mitra (Rituparno Ghosh). Is she more hurt by the loss of her son? Or, is the discovery of his alternative sexual preference more shocking? Or, does she feel betrayed by a son who kept part of his life a secret from a mother he was so close to?
The film fleshes out the reality of memories not being the monopoly of the immediate family such as a divorced and grieving mother. Memories are not confined to material belongings of someone who is no more. Memories also consist of moments shared with people distanced from blood ties who often become a 'new' family in a new home. They span out to include Siddharth's intimate moments that he shared with his lover, with his colleague who was in love with him; selective memories shelved for nostalgic moments within the experiences of those close to him, not just his mother who believed she knew her son the best.
- See more at: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/memories-in-march/776242/#sthash.ePsoGjYa.dpuf