By Nisha Susan
In the speculative fiction world that this Amul video was made in, we Indians really need to celebrate the birth of boys. So please suspend all disbelief.
A man brings home a new infant (we barely catch any sign of its mother but evs to that. The man’s mother is certainly there to congratulate him on his achievement). When the man’s elder child, a little girl, tells him that she has made everything ready for the new baby, she is gently mocked because on this day this masculine child was hardly likely to play with these teddy-type dolls. His infant testosterone requires a Spiderman doll, no less.
The elder child, in a Virginia Woolfish move, retreats to a room of her own made of bedsheets and a floor lamp, to contemplate the new world order. This is a truly speculative fiction world in which the father now attempts to tempt her out of her sadness with… milk.
When she says to him that he had said he wanted a girl, he replies like Hannibal Lecter’s clueless younger brother, “Saari girl child khatam ho gayi thi.” The young girl— who is not khatam— argues again that there is no point coming out to play since she doesn’t know how to play with these new dolls — a narrative crisis that DC Comics sometimes faces too.
The father has a magical solution. He will prepare her for the world in which little boys rule…by teaching her to play cricket. A happy ending.
Okay, goodnight, we need to go out and see if pigs are flying or cows are jumping over the moon.
(h/t reader Sulakshana)