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Release date:
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May 27, 2016
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Director:
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Anu Menon
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Cast:
Language:
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Kalki Koechlin,
Naseeruddin Shah, Rajat Kapoor, Arjun Mathur, Suhasini Maniratnam
Hindi
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Considering the
grim subject and setting – the intensive care unit of a luxe hospital in Kochi –
Waiting is a surprisingly pleasant
and positive film.
Anu Menon’s second
directorial venture has the same lightness of touch and natural storytelling
style she brought to her debut in 2012’s London,
Paris, New York starring Aditi Rao Hydari and Ali Zafar. Yet this film is
as different from her first as night is from day and Tara is from Shiv.
Tara and Shiv are
Tara Deshpande-Kapoor (Kalki Koechlin) and Professor Shiv Natraj (Naseeruddin
Shah) in this Hindi-English-occasionally-Malayalam (subtitled) film Waiting. They ought, henceforth, to be
an accepted metaphor for strangers who really “get” each other.
She is a feisty,
often foul-mouthed, occasionally unthinking though always well-meaning,
impatient, impetuous, flashy, attractive, young, recently married woman. Her
husband Rajat has just been in a near-fatal accident that sends him into a
coma.
Shiv’s wife of 40
years, Pankaja, has been in a coma for eight months. He is a spirited yet
sobre, prim and propah, meticulous, kind, staid old man and theirs has been a
happy marriage.
Tara is well off. Shiv
has taken on back-breaking debt to pay Pankaja’s medical bills.
The two meet in the
waiting room of the Kochi hospital where their respective spouses lie in an
Intensive Care Unit. As they bond over their grief, fears and difficult
decisions, they form an unlikely friendship that transcends age and
backgrounds.
He does not know
what Twitter is; the discovery that he has been married for four decades
elicits an incredulous “oh fuck” from her. Here is what they do have in common
though: they both adore their spouses.
It is the simplest
of premises drawn from a challenging phase in Menon’s own life. Under her
direction aided by a strong script she has co-written with James Ruzicka, it
turns into a warm, telling commentary on love, family, generation gaps, inner
strength and basic human goodness.
The film is not
only about two grieving individuals though. Central to the plot is the fact
that Tara is more alone than she might otherwise have been in this tragic
scenario, because she has been plucked out of her home city Mumbai and planted
in a new milieu where she has no friends and does not understand the language.
Kochi is busy and buzzing in comparison with other Kerala towns and cities, yet
not as much as India’s biggest metropolises; it is large enough to offer the
kind of high-end hospital where Rajat is being treated, but not as crowded or
frenetic as Chennai and Bengaluru in a way that might be familiar and comforting
to a lonely Mumbaikar.
The hustle and
bustle of daily life can sometimes be used to drown out the voices in our heads.
In relatively languorous Kochi, Tara does not have that option.
In such a place,
away from her family and social circle, it is but natural that she would turn
for comfort to a local who is also somewhat of an outsider: Pankaja is a
Malayali, Shiv is not. Being a retiree gives him enough time to be devoted to
his comatose wife while also offering a shoulder to cry on to Tara who initially
strikes him as an inexplicable drama queen.
If you go looking
for dramatic twists, you will not find them here. Waiting is not that kind of film. It does, however, throw a bunch
of questions at us. When we pray for a bed-ridden loved one’s longevity, are we
doing it for them or for ourselves? Is it selfish to long for their survival
irrespective of the quality of life they may have? If you pull the plug on
someone you love, are you giving up on them?
Waiting does not spoonfeed us responses to these
questions as universal truths. It leaves us to find our own answers while its
protagonists find theirs.
Shah and Koechlin
complement the film’s non-preachy and realistic tone. There is a natural rhythm
to their acting and the chemistry between them is unmistakable.
Tara is the kind of
woman who thinks nothing of making her husband’s evidently conservative
colleague squirm by asking him if Rajat was sleeping with a business associate.
Koechlin’s achievement is that she makes her character appealing despite her
brashness.
Shah is charismatic
as ever. Although his pupils appear strangely dilated in some close-ups, those
shots do not happen so often as to be distracting. The actor does not resort to
over-statement at any point although there are plenty of scenes where he could
have. Even when Shiv gets frantic about Pankaja, care is taken not to reduce
him to a caricature of an eccentric old man. His is a seemingly effortless and
moving performance.
The film features
several well-written supporting roles. National Award-winning
Tamil-Telugu-Malayalam actress Suhasini Maniratnam and Arjun Mathur are so
likeable in cameos as Pankaja and Rajat that you can well imagine a spouse
pining away for months and years for them.
Actor Krishnasankar
as the junior doctor Ravi and Rajeev Ravindranathan playing Girish from Rajat’s
Kochi office are interesting choices. It is nice to see the film’s Malayali
characters being played without the usual Bollywood ‘Madrasi’ stereotyping.
Rajat Kapoor walks
a fine line as the neurosurgeon Dr Nirupam Malhotra, making him a man who is
hard to dislike although he is painfully practical in a way that some people
might consider heartless, even egotistical. I did not entirely understand why
he had to be a Punjabi though – this is not to suggest that there are no
Punjabi doctors in Kochi, but that the lack of locals except in supporting,
subordinate positions is curious. Except for this and a somewhat contrived,
needless revelation Shiv makes to Pankaja at one point, the rest of the film
flows as smoothly as the backwaters that briefly appear on screen.
Waiting is about some of the toughest decisions life can
throw at us and about an unusual, heartwarming friendship. It is both sad and
amusing, believable, well acted and very well told.
Rating
(out of five): ***
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CBFC Rating (India):
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A
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Running time:
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99 minutes
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This
review has also been published on Firstpost:
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