rheaitis

filia_noctis  gave me Chitrangada Singh and Ranveer Singh and specified something non-romantic.

Karuna (Chitrangada) is old enough to remember her mother’s death, but had been too young to actually remember the woman beyond an impression of sorrowful eyes and apathy. She’s later learnt that the apathy was helped along with enough brandy to kill a horse, much less the sleek and slender Jayati. She doesn’t know what drove her mother to alcoholism: her aunt is tight-lipped about it, and her father forbade her to tell stories to her brother. Karuna was too young to argue about the edict then, and hasn't bothered since: it's just one in a long list of reasons to resent and be suspicious of her father. Another--more significant but doubtless related--is the way he treats her as his heir, her brother as his child, and the two as entirely separate identities.

Lalit (Ranveer) has trouble recognising his mother in old photographs, and doesn’t care. His whole world is his sister and their father, whom he adores; when he was a kid he could go weeks without speaking to anyone but Didi and Papa, and whatever adjutant had been seconded to the care and feeding of Captain (then Major) Sharma’s children. Inconveniences and the occasional health-scare aside, Lalit still misses their childhood of moving from base to base, posting to posting. Army brat for life, yo! It’s not that he doesn’t like Mumbai, or the art scene, or his current life, he just misses being the centre of his Didi’s and--when he could spare the time to come back to quarters--Papa’s attention.

Lokajit (Naseeruddin) retired from the Army when it became obvious that neither of his children were likely to survive another posting: from stress, from illness, from Karuna stabbing the next boy who made a pass at her. When asked why he didn't hand the children to either of their aunts--and he was asked endlessly in the first few years--Lokajit always says Kargil was enough war for him, and he’s not prepared to orphan his kids. Karuna was 17 in 1999, Lalit was 13; old enough to know their father might die any day, young enough to be lastingly affected by the deaths of jawans and officers they had known for years. If anyone wants to accuse him of cowardice, they’re welcome to talk to his Yudh Seva Medal, and also to fuck right off.

But Kargil was twenty years ago, and his kids are grown and so is the business he started in 2000. What business? Oh, import-export, nothing too significant, just a few things here and there, he built up contacts in his military career, and people trust ex-Army, as well they should. It’s fine, it’s all fine, come audit him anytime you like. He’s a nice old man, progressive and liberal, planning on handing the reins of the company to his hyper-competent daughter rather than his dreamer of a son. That he worships the ground Lalit walks on and has weekly fights with Karuna have no impact on this decision, and Lokajit isn’t sure why it should; it’s not like they fight about the company or their plans for it.

  
  
  

avani008 asked for the Fake Movie Meme, with Aditi Rao Hydari, Aushmann Khurrana, and Supriya Pathak.

Ruhi (Aditi Rao Hydari) got married right out of college, and exchanged her Stephen Greenblatt for good old Sanjeev Kapoor. Her husband swore up and down that he wouldn’t mind her resuming her studies, but it’s always been understood that family (their family which really means his) comes first. He’s never said it, but he’s never had to: Ruhi’s attempts to enroll for a masters degree in the first years of their marriage were always set in second place to every family occasion and emergency. After the birth of her daughter she’d given up on her lingering hopes for further studies and devoted herself to motherhood.

It never struck her as possible that her in-laws might not think like her husband, till an offhand mention of her dashed hopes finds her mother-in-law Jayita (Supriya Pathak) up in arms about her missed opportunities. Ruhi finds herself enrolled in D.U in short order, with Jayita in charge of her daughter, husband, and household. There may or may not have been shouting matches to which she was not privy, but her husband has certainly been going around looking simultaneously cowed and self-righteous.

Possibly this is going to blow up in her face sometime soon, but Ruhi doesn’t have time to think about it. She has the Delhi traffic to deal with twice a day after twelve years at home, classes where most of the other students are a decade or more her junior, her own papers to write and her daughter’s homework to supervise, and Dr. Nitin Gupte (Ayushmann Khurrana), who teaches her Early Modern Lit now and used to steal her Shakespeare notes when they were in college together. He hasn’t forgotten her, and she’s got to get used to being called upon in class; worse, she’s got to tell him they can’t possibly be friends again.