When her mother-in-law falls unexpectedly ill, a young Tamil Brahmin woman (Konkona Sen Sharma as Meenakshi Iyer) must cut short a visit to her parents and return to her husband’s home. With her baby in tow, she boards a bus for the first part of her journey. Concerned that she will be traveling on her own with an infant, her parents asks an acquaintance, Raja, who happens to be boarding the same bus, to keep an eye on both mother and child.

Raja (Rahul Bose as Raja Chowdhary) is a mild-mannered and well-travelled wildlife photographer. Meenakshi assumes he’s Hindu, but in fact he’s a Bengali Muslim. As they do not speak each other’s first language, they have to communicate in English. "In India," explains a voiceover at the beginning of the movie, "there are 18 official languages and nearly as many different religions." This is said only half in jest.

The bus is full of passengers—-a group of young college students who make a racket singing the hours away, a young married couple occupied with themselves, a mean-tempered old ‘aunty’, a mother and her handicapped son, two Sikh men, a quiet old Muslim couple, a bunch of card-playing friends, etc.

When the main road is blocked, the driver of the bus makes a detour, but they end up trapped in a long line of traffic. As they wait for the traffic to start moving, news reach them about a riot nearby. Muslim fanatics had killed some Hindus, and now a group of Hindus are on a warpath, waylaying Muslims and killing them in retaliation. When Raja hears this, he tells Meenakshi that he is a Muslim. She is shocked and appalled: she had actually drunk from his water-bottle! But when the bus is surrounded by torch-wielding fanatics and two swarm on board, Meenakshi shows both sense and decency, as well as courage and presence of mind, by identifying Raja as her husband, Mr Iyer. Raja is saved, but not everyone on the bus is so lucky. Watching the unfortunate being herded off is both horrifying and infuriating.

Writer/Director Aparna Sen has been making films for over 20 years now, and she has steadfastly avoided the glamour of Bollywood. She may be accused of nepotism for casting her daughter in the part of Meenakshi, but for the fact that Konkona Sen Sharma has been widely feted for her portrayal of a Tamil Brahmin woman (she is in fact Bengali), from the accent and mannerisms right down to the drape of her sari. Personally, I feel that she was trying a little too hard in the beginning, but soon settled into the role for which she had obviously made extensive research. In fact, her mother sent her to Chennai for a week to learn the nuances of the Tamil Brahmins, an experience which obviously paid off. Also, the fact that she looks barely old enough to play the part gives added poignancy to the overriding theme of loss.

Rahul Bose, obviously an actor of depth and control, is excellent as the urbane and mild-mannered Raja. Both he and Konkona Sen Sharma are perfectly cast. As for the rest of the cast, special mention must go to the old Muslim couple (played by non-Muslim actors, Bhisham Sahni and Surekha Sikri), and to the baby who cries and smiles and points as if on cue, and who’s perfectly adorable at all times.

Goutam Ghose’s cinematography is beautiful yet understated, and is complemented by lovely songs composed and sung by Zakir Hussain. Melodrama a la Bollywood is notably absent, and writer/director Aparna Sen demonstrates her trademark low-key treatment of violence—- in no way does she shy away from it, but she depicts its approach (building tension that makes your breath quicken) and its aftermath (a discarded possession, a bawling child) rather than the storm itself. The impact on the audience can be devastating.

In an interview with Deepali Nandwani, Aparna Sen replied to a question about the backdrop of violence in Mr & Mrs Iyer:

“The violence brings a little poignancy to the story. Fear and uncertainty bring people together. Some of the timeless love stories --- The English Patient, Dr Zhivago --- were set [ against] the backdrop of violence……I have been deeply concerned about the ugly head of fundamentalism that has been ravaging the country……It pains me to see that the secularism that Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi stood up for is almost extinct. Even among the urban middle class and the upper middle class, the so-called educated, enlightened class, secularism is absent.”

Critic Subhash K Jha likened Mr & Mrs Iyer to master filmmaker Mani Ratnam’s Bombay, “arguably one of the finest explorations of human intolerance mounted on screen. While thematically similar, Mr & Mrs Iyer is Bombay’s polar opposite in terms of storytelling. While Bombay was an extravagant, epic-scale portrayal of communal hatred, Sen’s film is a simple, microscopic view that is equally chilling and effective.” He goes on to say: “Human intolerance in India is a quality often associated with the uneducated or the illiterate. Religious violence is repeatedly branded as the result of politicians using the illiterate to strengthen their own power. Mr. and Mrs. Iyer asserts that the problem resides far beyond the aforementioned demographic. That baseless intolerance is also very much a part of the personality of the educated is an ignored fact that stares us in the eye everyday. Aparna Sen’s target audience is clearly an educated, urban one. Through Mr. and Mrs. Iyer she sticks a mirror up to their faces and asks them one question – Why?”

She does that indeed, making Meenakshi an educated woman laden with prejudices. And though the story itself makes us question the nature of prejudice and intolerance, it is first and foremost a journey of two young people from very different backgrounds thrown together under circumstances not of their own making. Aparna Sen intimates that they learn from one another, enriching each other in the process, and hopefully eradicating their prejudices. But the beliefs and habits of a lifetime are hard to quash, as Meenakshi shows by the way she drinks from Raja’s bottle of water a second time.

The idea of a happily-married woman with a young baby falling for a perfect stranger within a couple of days sits uncomfortably with me. It’s not even as if he had saved her life at risk of his own—it’s the other way round, with her risking herself and her baby to keep him safe from harm. Granted, she may find him attractive, urbane and educated as he is, but his appeal to her seems to stem more from the fact that he’s a cosmopolite, well-travelled within India as well, and an artist who sees the world (both literally and figuratively) differently from the way she does.

It is when they are asked for an account of their honeymoon and Raja is forced to improvise with a story backed by his travels to beautiful and exotic places, that we see Meenakshi’s eyes light up. He is describing a world of beauty that she, from a very sheltered background and limited by her circumstances (both social and religious), has not and may never see. A high-caste Brahmin, married as soon as she obtained her postgraduate degree from university, Meenakshi has never and may never experience such carefree travels to such exotic places, and she knows it.

The relationship between the two main characters seems to me to be less about love and fidelity and more about a yearning for a wider world to see and experience—perhaps a metaphor for a people bound by the shackles of dogma-laden religion opening themselves up to a world where one’s every action is not governed by rigid rules of conduct. Personally, I feel that if the relationship between the two main characters could have been played as such, rather than as an unlikely bittersweet romance that jarred on many levels, the movie would be that much more realistic. Having said that, convention dictates that when you have a movie, it must star a male and female lead and they must fall in love. So I guess the love story bit is inevitable.

And what of the over-riding theme of loss? Well, there is the loss of human life, of humaneness every time violence is perpetrated by one person on another, no matter the cause. There is the loss of sense, when the busload of passengers is confronted by terror, betrayal and futility in short order. There is the loss of sight when one is blinded by prejudice. There is also the loss of innocence, for everyone involved, however passively, in a violent situation, would be marked in some way.

However, there is also an awakening, and it is Meenakshi’s. The story is hers more than anyone else’s, and it is her journey of enlightenment and, in a sense, her coming of age. Her gift to Raja might have been his life, but his gift to her is two-fold and double-edged. He showed her a world of natural beauty, of boundless horizons free from man-made artifice. The kicker is this: now she knows what she’s been missing, and what she might never have.

It is rare for an Indian film to be made in English (Bollywood films are in Hindi or Marathi, the provincial dialect for Bombay), but in a country of many languages, English is the medium of communication for people from different parts of the country. Aparna Sen has admitted she is trying to reach the urban, young, English-speaking audience both in India and abroad.

Aparna Sen has made many films in a career spanning decades. Her most famous film (some would say her masterpiece) is 36 Chowringhee Lane.



Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older