Every weekday in the Connected Hum Tum TV Blog we’ll be posting and talking about the latest goings-on of the six women cantering around Mumbai recording their liveswith video cameras. (Read The Curtain-Raiser post for a quick intro to the show.)
The latest episode was a particularly exciting one, possibly because we saw lots of footage and very, very little Abhay. Yay. Naturally, the key to having an episode like this is choosing a strong central theme that all the women in the episode can contribute enough interesting footage to: more like last night’s “Family” and less like last Thursday’s “Sunday”.
A favourite pastime while watching the show has become identifying the bits that the women have staged for the camera. This episode started off with one such moment, when Madhavi’s alarm rings. She is roused from a deep sleep, switches off the alarm and begins talking straight into the camera, which, unless she taped herself sleeping, she had to have set up earlier to document her awakening.
Anyway. We see that Madhavi is ill, and desperately seeking company. After much discussion and a dismissal of Avinash’s ability to be a sickbed companion, she finally decides to spend two days at her younger sister Radha’s house. Radha doesn’t exactly come across as supportive, but she’s better than no one. I guess. She fries Madhavi eggs, but she also tells her that she never should have left her husband. When Madhavi asks her what she would do if she was in her position, she replies annoyingly that she wouldn’t have even been in that position in the first place, and that she should have made it work with Avinash. Still, the conversation brings us some pretty memorable lines (like when asked about Avinash, she says she can’t have a clear conversation with him because “aatha hi hai ghode pe, jaatha hi hai ghode pe”, referring to his habit of visiting only behind the shield of their granddaughter.)
Of all the women we’ve seen, Sonal’s the most emotionally vested in her work (no matter how hard Malishka tries to project the same). She talks of her favourite lines from the play she’s organizing, Alternate Initiative’s Ek Madhav Baug (the lines read, “tu jo hai, jaisa hai, tu mera hai, and that’s the way mama loves you”). We find out that her parents are very supportive of her, although her mother did once say such things as “I know you actually like boys, maybe this is just a phase, you should see a counsellor”. We also encounter a terse argument between Sonal and her girlfriend, where Sonal asks her if she ever intends to tell her father about her orientation. Jaanu snaps that she doesn’t intend to shout it from the rooftops like Sonal does. I love the parts when Sonal looks straight into the camera and talks about her life: she has a quiet, well-articulated way of speaking that takes you into her struggles with a level of honesty that’s impossible to ignore.
Which brings us to Mahima. I honestly feel someone should do a show with just her, she’s that entertaining (and her turns of phrase alone could carry it, what with “baalon ki mummy-papa” and “connections ki maa-behen”). I think she brings us to an important juncture early on in the episode, where, after a brief argument with her mother (saved on her phone as “my god”), she turns to her camera for solace (“tum mera saath dena” and blows a teary-eyed kiss). This was bound to happen at some point, and I’m glad Mahima was the one who got there first. Much like a diary, the cameras have become vital to these women’s emotional lives. We also find out that Mahima became a Christian soon after coming to Bombay, and she insists that “Sunday [is] only for Jejus”. She tells us how when she came to the city, she was alone and dejected until she met Vaishnavi didi, who told her about Jejus and showed her the light. She looks forward to the singing, dancing and masti that church brings, and this is where Mahima finds family in Bombay. Her family back home, however, continues to nag and generally make life difficult, and this takes a visible toll on her.
Abhay’s summing up of the episode’s events was comprehensive and straight-forward, and closed an episode that serves as an ideal blueprint for others yet to come: devoid of toings and other frills, with the bulk of the 20 odd minutes being taken up by quality footage.