Fake Film Meme

[toujours_nigel]

avani008 asked for Aishwarya Rai, Juhi Chawla, Madhuri Dixit, Ayushmann Khurrana, Sanya Malhotra.

Once upon a time… well, in 1990, Purushottam Rao met Maitri Sahu (Madhuri Dixit) and fell in love with her. He was still in the army, a captain with a bright career ahead of him. She was a civilian, but her cousin had been called an insurgent for a long time, and her younger brother was beginning to be called a Maoist. It was just surprising that the Sahu he left with after that raid was a woman; the bigger surprise was that she stayed alive to see morning, and the next, and the next. When his course of duty ended in ’91, she was still alive and hadn’t tried contacting her family for months. She said yes when he asked whether he loved her, she said yes to moving back home with him. She didn’t say yes to marriage, but he’d never proposed.

Legally, he couldn’t have. Purushottam Rao had been married at twenty-two to fifteen-year old Pammi (Juhi Chawla), who had counted her blessings when both sets of parents allowed her to write her tenth exams before she got married, and to write her twelfth exams before they really started trying for a child. They’d even been kind enough to let her get a B.Com through correspondence courses because a smart wife was useful to an ambitious man. She didn’t manage to go very fast, but that didn’t matter: family came first, and she couldn’t study when there was Dhiru to take care of. She got her degree the year Dhiru turned four, and volunteered to travel with her husband to his new posting. Purushottam made excuses, and she hadn’t really wanted to go, so she accepted them and stayed at home with her in-laws and her son. He wrote as frequently as he ever had (not very), and seemed as pleasantly distracted as he ever did on their monthly phone-calls.

Standing on the steps to their house, watching Purushottam escort an unfamiliar girl up the drive, she can see why he hadn’t missed her. Well, fine, she hadn’t missed him either. Her mother-in-law is muttering about the slut who turned her son’s head and “don’t worry Pammi, we’ll get rid of her right away,” but the stranger isn’t the problem, her husband is. It’s better to have proof of infidelity, of course, because that makes divorce comprehensible even for her extremely conservative parents and in-laws. The only one shocked is Purushottam, who seems to have been hoping they could all live happily together, Pammi managing the household and Maitri managing him.

“You even have the same birthday,” he tells her, grinning. “It’s like I’m with twins! And Maitri’s great with kids, so she’ll take care of our children.”

Maitri’s daughter is born in June, 1992, a month after her parents are married. Maitri nearly dislocates Pammi’s wrist, she squeezes her fingers so hard. Purushottam is away on a new tour of duty, baffled and dismayed by how crookedly his fantasies have manifested.

What is past is prologue. It’s 2018, Namrata (Sanya Malhotra) has never known life without her brother, and it’s up to Dhiren (Ayushmann Khuranna) to explain their family situation to strangers and casual acquaintances when Nimmi’s breezily spoken about their mothers. Explanations… don’t really help, because even Dhiren’s not certain how it all works: Papa’s still mostly absent, Mumma runs the family business, and Ma’s the one who brought him up age six and upwards, and yeah, technically Mumma and Papa are divorced, but Mumma never even bothered moving out and Papa doesn’t–don’t ask him why knows, just, in fact let’s not talk about this at all–cohabit with either her or Ma, not really. There was a horribly awkward year after he retired, when Dhiren was still in college, but then he found a flat, where he lives. It’s… fine, it’s all fine. He’s practising law, Nimmi’s getting her MBA, they see Papa once a week, it’s all good.

Nimmi doesn’t have these confusions. Home is Dada and Dadi and Mumma and Ma, and knowing what questions to never ask and never wanting to ask questions. (Why doesn’t Papa live with us? Why does Ma never talk about her home? Why are Bhai’s Nana Nani around and not mine? Why aren’t Ma’s wedding photos up on the walls?) It’s fine, it’s all fine, we’re all fine here. She gets Bhai to vet any guy she or her friends are interested in, but that’s just sensible. She doesn’t hang out with her dude friends or drink with them or smoke up with them or really want to date them, but that’s just normal also. (She maybe might be kinda sorta has a crush on Bhai’s boss, but have you looked at her? It’s odd Bhai doesn’t have a crush. Bhai’s the one who’s probably queer, it’s for sure not her.) Anyway Bhai’s the one who should be thinking about getting married, he’s thirty, stop asking me what boys I like, Papa. You’re not going to die unsatisfied if I don’t get married.

And then Purushottam does, and wills all his money and family home to Dhiren. His will doesn’t even mention Maitri or Namrata, and pragmatically speaking, it’s not a problem: he and Mumma won’t let anything happen to them, and anyway Nimmi’s going to start making more money than him probably, and… Dhiren has abandonment issues and daddy issues and insecurity and all of that, and he’s happy to admit it. But he can’t stand the way Nimmi looked betrayed, the way Ma looked resigned. So he does the one thing he can think of, and he hires his boss Shyama Malhotra (Aishwarya) to challenge the will on Nimmi’s behalf.

No Snowflake Challenge entry today, cause I feel distinctly unkind.