The Sahay’s live in an inherited mansion…a white elephant actually. Given that Jaya Bachchan plays Kher’s wife and Abhishek Bachchan is the male lead, this exchange is subversively interesting. There’s a curious bit here when Kher’s reference of Harivanshrai Bachchan is presumed as Amitabh Bachchan by a ‘raddi waala’( waste paper dealer).
Savitri sews the pieces of a fragmented present Shivshankar lives in the glorious past and pines for a promising future. Vibhavri(Rani Mukerji) is the ‘brotherly’ elder sister to the bubbly Shubhavri(Konkona Sen Sharma), both daughters of Shivshankar and Savitri Sahay(Anupam Kher and Jaya Bachchan).
Works like a bad attempt at a musical this, especially Swanand Kirkire trying to pull off a Gulzar with lyrics that strive to read like poetry in prose, but fail. The opening track ‘Hum Toh Aise Hain Bhaiyya’ ( We're like this only)uses one too many crane shots and one too many cute lines to introduce us to the principal characters based in Varanasi. Sarkar doesn’t waste much time in getting down to business. And this is just the first of many unfortunate ironies, including a reel-imitates-real irony where a film crew lands up in Varanasi to hostile reception much like the crew of Laaga Chunari Mein Daag did. The last thing I expected to miss in a woman-centric film was ‘balls’.
Where it falters then, and massively so, is in the department of…I apologize for putting this as civilly as crudeness allows…‘balls’. This purported ‘journey of a woman’ has many things going for it at the outset- a director who’s already proved his mettle with the wonderful throwback to Bengali cinema of yore that was Parineeta, a cast headed by three supremely talented women and the backing of a monster production house to a script that is probably as far-out as the ‘house’ in question will ever greenlight. One experiences an unfortunate sense of irony while watching Pradeep Sarkar’s Laaga Chunari Mein Daag(A Stain On My Veil).
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