Wholesome Romance:
Even before their hit Hum Aapke Hain Koun (1994), altered somewhat the course of mainstream Hindi cinema, Rajshri Productions have been known for their family-friendly films, extolling traditional Indian values.
Their first OTT production, Bada Naam Karenge, with Sooraj R. Barjatya as showrunner, and Palash Vaswani as director, was bound to stick to the same template, but with some progressive elements built in, to pre-empt criticism about the legacy film company’s (songs from their old hits punctuate the soundtrack) tendency to be sanskari in an old-fashioned way.
Over the last few years, Hindi cinema has started setting films in small towns of north and central India, and picked up issues that affect today’s generation; Bada Naam Karenge does the same, but in a more wholesome manner. Barjatya and his writers (S. Manasvi and Vidit Tripathi) concede that modernity has reached tier 3 cities – the gleaming cars, smooth roads, swishy shops, a windmill twirling in the distance testify to it—but at heart, people are still conservative. Marriages are arranged within the same caste; it is understood that the daughter-in-law will be absorbed into the joint family structure, and the whole clan will defer to the patriarch. The social and domestic status quo will not be toppled over.
Ratlam-based Anand Rathi (Kanwaljeet Singh) is such a patriarch, who decides the way their mithai business is conducted, and who the newly-graduated MBA nephew, Rishabh (Ritik Ghanshani) will marry. The whole family – Anand’s wife (Alka Amin), Rishabh’s parents (Rajesh Jais-Chaitrali Lokesh), cousin, sister-in-law and nephew – go to see Ujjain girl Surbhi (Ayesha Kaduskar), who is accompanied by her parents (Jameel Khan-Deepika Amin), brother and sister-in-law. Her family is not as well off as his, but they are more open-minded; for Rathi, the main criterion is whether she will fit into his palatial home.
Rishabh and Surbhi have a history from their days as students in Mumbai, but they pretend they do not know each other, and this harmless deception blows up to crisis proportions over the nine episodes of the show. The poetry-spouting, microbiology student Surbhi, finds herself at a party in Rishabh’s swanky apartment, though at an earlier meeting in a bar, they had exchanged barbs. The covid lockdown is suddenly announced, and in a contrived piece of writing, she is trapped for five days in his apartment. Their chaste friendship grows over that period, then Surbhi disappears, ghosts Rishabh and does not surface till the family meeting.
Most of the series is taken up by the family gatherings, fixing of the match, the preparations, shopping, the roka, impending Janmashtami celebrations and so on. Surbhi’s brother (Gyanendra Tripathi) is wary because Rathi had almost ostracized his sister (Anjana Sukhani) for daring to fall in love with a man not approved by him, and forced her to marry Rajesh (Rajesh Tailang), who always reminds them of the favour he did to save the Rathi reputation. He is worried that Surbhi will not be happy in such a family.
Then Rajesh discovers Rishabh’s secret Mumbai life, that includes booze and a mysterious girl, and the family name is in danger of being dragged into the mud. The point the series makes, after much drama, is that the older generation should respect the younger generation, if they expect to be respected in turn, and it should be love not fear as the binding force. The family unit must remain sacrosanct, however, at no point does Rishabh decide to break away. Even professionally, he wants to gain experience with a successful company (OTT star Jitendra Kumar makes a guest appearance as the boss of a ‘unicorn’) and then run the family business.
To the credit of the series, the inevitability of change is introduced without painting either generation in villainous colours—Rathi is not a nasty brute, Rishabh is not a brat, and respect for women is emphasized. Even though women in the Rathi family look a bit docile, they are not in ghoonghat.
Ritik Ghanshani and Ayesha Kaduskar make for a charming pair and have a chemistry that works for the show. Seasoned actors like Kanwaljeet Singh, Alka Amin and Jameel Khan offer adequate support.
Bada Naam Karenge reaches out to the large faction of viewership that once patronized the conventional world of television’s saas-bahu serials, and grew out of the trend, but are not totally comfortable with the violence and profanity of current streaming content. Like the Indo-West fusion outfits of the young women in the show, Bada Naam Karenge, finds its comfort zone in a cautious liberalism.
(This piece first appeared in scroll.in)
