Every weekday in the Connected Hum Tum Blog we will be posting and talking about the latest goings-on of the six women cantering around Mumbai recording their lives with video cameras. (Read The Curtain-Raiser post for a quick intro to the show.)
Thursday night’s episode was all about a Sunday. We were introduced to two more of the six women: Sonal, a young bisexual who came to Bombay for all kinds of love, and Madhavi, a twice-divorced grandmother (and mother to the oddly named Mishtulaya, adorably shortened to Mishti). Preeti (and her good ol’ pati, Sanju) also made a brief appearance in the episode.
But you know who didn’t make a brief appearance on last night’s episode? Abhay Deol. As adorable as he is (even in tangerine colored V-neck shirts), I found myself wishing that he didn’t have to weigh in on every two seconds of footage with his own two cents and redundant explanations. We get it. You find women confusing and contradictory. Okay.
One thing that set this episode apart from the others we’ve seen so far was the extent to which side–characters defined and carried it forward. We saw very little of the women talking about themselves and their own feelings. We saw far more of the important people in their lives.
This was most true in Sonal’s case. Sonal moved to Bombay mainly so she could continue to be with her “evil/wicked” twin sister, Rupa, and this is quite evident from her footage. Bombay, to Sonal, seems to begin and end with Rupa, and I’m not complaining here at all. Rupa’s laughter (irrespective of the funniness of the “budiya bomb hai” joke), her yelping insistence on her maid’s complete attention, and her muffled comment — “so dirty!” — had me laughing out loud just a little.
I really did like how Sonal spent so much of her time just filming her sister; it brought to mind all sorts of mushy ideas, like how much one sister defines the other. I’m assuming, however, that they’ll go their separate ways on Monday.
While the twins spent their Sunday very obviously enjoying each other’s company, Madhavi did quite the opposite. The awkwardness of an afternoon in the presence of her ex-husband, Avinash, was palpable. Not even the presence of a young granddaughter could diffuse it. It is interesting that her more introspective moments were centred around his reappearance in her life and her feelings about it. Today’s footage was nothing without Avinash, who is vaguely reminiscent of our old friend Sanju, since they share a complete inability to do simple things like open a plastic container.
An aside: gotta love the casual sexiness with which Madhavi fluffed up her hair and settled back to enjoy the rain before Avinash threw her Sunday off track.
Preeti’s day was defined by the absence of a person to share it with. My favourite part of her footage was the annoyed glance she threw straight at the camera, a la Modern Family, during a particularly frustrating lunch with ol’ pati.
Both Preeti and Sonal seemed largely in control of what they wanted to film and they walked around holding their cameras in their hands. Madhavi’s style, on the other hand, relied more on leaving it at a more distant vantage point and letting events unfold. This was useful, because we got to see her real-time reactions. During a phone call with Mishti, the camera caught her blank shock and nervous stammering (“kyun, kyun-kyun, kyun…”)
As for the central theme, “Sunday” was a weak episode. It just couldn’t produce a graceful transition from clip to clip, and the strain was pretty evident, particularly in the first half of the show (maybe that explains the Abhay load). Of the four episodes so far, this one was the most dilute.