All about avoiding the family

Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, alongside a slew of recent releases, has completed the "nuclearisation" of lead characters. Bereft of mom and pop, uncle-auntie, brother-sister, everyone seems to be on his/her own. We are missing the 'supporting cast'!

It's all about loving the family. Or so I thought and agreed with the memorable catch-phrase associated with Karan Johar's Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. Perhaps that's why I was startled by the extermination of parents, grandmoms and siblings in his Ae Dil Hai Mushkil.
None of the major characters - Ayan (Ranbir Kapoor), Alizeh (Anushka Sharma) and Saba (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan) - had to carry the emotional baggage of a family. None of the trio had families, or even close friends, to speak of. Ayan's gazillionaire dad, who, it seems, owns a private jetplane, was dismissed with a quick shot which did not even reveal his face in a silhouette.
Alizeh's father, we were informed, had some issues over a DJ (Fawad Khan, almost hidden under a bushy beard), the man she had elected to fall in love with and marry. And that's it: the offended father was dismissed in a line or two of the dialogue. Shayara Saba, an Urdu poetess residing in Vienna, stays in isolated splendour. And as for the artist of abstract paintings - enacted by Shah Rukh Khan in a cameo - she had divorced, well, he just fetches up for a solitary scene to elocute a string of sarcastic jibes.
Alarmingly, when Alizeh is struck by a terminal illness, there's absolutely no one to tend to her needs, not even a girl-pal. Now all these Beautiful People were either living in a vacuum or they were so self-sufficient that they didn't need any support systems. Alas, it would appear that it's about all about avoiding the family nowadays.
A strange turnaround for Karan Johar, whose body of work has banked on the warmth of human kindness exuded by side-bar characters, be it the authoritarian father who displays a change of heart (read Amitabh Bachchan in Kabhi Khushi.), the lovable hostel warden who serves as a morale-booster in the event of familial calamities (Himani Shivpuri in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai), the frank woman always there for a friend in need (Kirron Kher in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna), and the worldly-wise grandma (Farida Jalal in Student of the Year). Truly, where have all these key elders gone?
Obviously hamstrung by the excessive running length of Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, clocking in at 158 minutes, the side bars had to be dropped, perhaps during the very conception of the screenplay. A pity really. Chances are that, within the matrix of Bollywood cinema, the inclusion of family members would have enhanced the emotional quotient of a love story which persists in hitting turbulent weather at every twist and turn of the plot.
Come to think of it, Bollywood movies - once replete with sacrificing mother figures toiling away at sewing machines to pay for the hero's college fees, thunderous status-conscious patriarchs, wily uncles and agony aunts - appear to be abolishing senior citizens.
However clichéd the oldies might have been, they were instrumental in creating dramatic conflicts as well as providing resolutions for the ultimate destinies of the lead pair. Take the example of Raj Kapoor's Bobby, for instance. Without the face-off between the hero's cussed aristocratic father, played by Pran, and  the heroine's rough-talking fisherman father, vivified by Premnath, would Bollywood's classic romance have worked at all?
The year, in fact, has yielded scripts which have been chronically divested of backstories. Akshay Kumar in Rustom, a take on the Nanavati murder case, has no family to speak of. Pink - an otherwise intelligently written coutroom drama - looks at three working girls victimised by a politician's nephew and his cohorts. Except for brief glimpses of one of the girl's father in and out of the courtroom, the other two seem to have been isolated by their proverbial near-and-dear ones.
By contrast, some of the top successes of the year didn't discount the family factor, at all - be it Sultan, Fan, or Kapoor & Sons (produced by Karan Johar). Indeed, the acclaimed biopic Neerja was notable for the characterisation of the resilient mother of the slain airhostess. Portrayed with tremendous sensitivity by Shabana Azmi, the concluding scene, underscoring the mother's pride over her courageous daughter, was not only moving but as real as it gets.
Overall, the traditional importance of backstories has been eroded. So here's keeping my fingers crossed that, come what may, the elders and betters will be re-apportioned their due status. And so who knows? There could be a revival of that precious catchline, "It's all about loving the family."  
wknd@khaleejtimes.com