Of family politics...

Ramprasad Ki Tehrvi (Ramprasad's Final Rites, Hindi; 2019)
Written and Directed by Seema Pahwa

All families will have their own internal politics. Over property, money or ego, family members may squabble and refuse to descend from their high horses. They refuse to see common ground. Nature sometimes play games to remind everybody of how fragile each of us is and tries to put us in our respective place. The easiest way Nature does this is to invoke death within the family. 

The scurrying of family members gives an opportune time to meant fences. The warring factions may rescind, albeit for a short time, only to return to their old ways once the mourning period is over. 

Human relationships are so fragile. More often than not, we do not say what we mean and mean what we say. Everything is sugarcoated to maintain harmony on the surface, but beneath it all, resentment brews. Everyone is concerned with their own survival. Family dynamics have evolved over the generations, and the extended family concept is so yesterday. Migration to towns and immersion in post-Industrial revolution age type of pigeon-holed urban housing makes nuclear families the norm. Filial piety takes a backseat after marriage, and afterwards, honouring the elders is only confined to weddings and funerals.

The film tells about the death of an elderly music teacher, Ramprasad. His children and close relatives congregate in his house to pacify and fulfil the final rites (Tehrvi). Soon, the family politics come out one by one. The sisters-in-law bitch about the youngest of them, who is an actor. The sons complain about their father. Old wounds start festering. It reached a crescendo when it is discovered that the deceased has a big unpaid mortgage on their family property. Nobody is in a position to chip in to save it. In fact, the father had taken loans to finance each and one of the offspring.

The grieving mother sees the family members like they are there for an extended vacation, catching up on all stories, snapping photographs and the sons having drinking sessions most nights. Nobody seems to be grieving. She thinks that maybe she and her husband had failed in their duties to instil hardship on their children. By just shielding them from life challenges and pad them at every fall, maybe they had made them weak. She also realises that all her kids had their own challenges to meet within their family.

The mandatory thirteen days of mourning ends. The children return to their own lives, letting the mother alone to fend for herself. Life moves on. She continues the music school for children.  

A slow-moving movie that peels the layers of unsaid and unspoken politics in every typical Indian family.

(P.S. The story and settings of this film almost parallel that of another of Netflix's offerings, Pagglait. It is also about family politics and funeral, but from the POV of a grieving widow.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.