We need dream merchants as much as doctors and district magistrates

Yes, 2020 has been terrible.

And it has just been four and a half months. The need to grieve has been ever present in the past 140 days.

But while visuals of thousands of migrant workers walking, resting and stuck at bus stands and railway stations prompted us to donate to charities and relief funds, most of us did not stop watching Money Heist or Hasmukh.

Films are a great equaliser. In India, people across the class divide laugh and cry at the same movies— the only difference being the plushness of the seats and the selection of snacks available. Amba Cinema is not PVR Director’s Cut. But Hindi Medium was Hindi Medium.

Every middle-class Indian father who watched that film could empathise with Irrfan’s Raj-- broken English, a loving but nagging wife, a Delhicious love for pakorey and chhole-kulche, and a desire to give his child the best schooling possible. But the ridiculous hurdles of competitive nursery admissions would make sure he jumped his hoops and jumped them well.

In Piku, we saw him transform into that snarky Taxi stand owner-turned-driver that we all know. He cracked jokes at the perpetually constipated hypo- chondriac grandfather and made fun of the CR Park memsaab’s outlandish demands but grudgingly fulfilled them anyway. By the end of the trip, he was almost family... almost.

In The Lunchbox, he made us root for the cantan- kerous old neighborhood grouch. Even though he often refused to return our cricket balls, we finally saw that he had a heart. And we wept for his loneliness and rejoiced when he finally took out his wife’s old cassettes of early Doordarshan dramas. Did he ever go to Bhutan? Did Ila find him? Did it matter in the end? Well, in the end the cancer won. But he did not lose.

The fact that he is mourned so deeply by so many, that his loss is so personal to millions of us, is a testimony to the richness of the life he led. Rishi Kapoor was again a legend. There is no other way to describe him. In more ways than one, he was among the royals of the Hindi film industry. Coming from the Kapoor clan, he walked in big shoes throughout his illustrious career. The big shoes eventually realized he wasn’t going to falter, so they altered themselves to snugly fit around the shape of his feet.

Just the other day, my sister and I were re-watching Student Of The Year, an Indian version of the equally mindless American series Gossip Girl. We spent most of the watching time drawing parallels between the characters and howling with laughter at the similarities we had previously missed. Ram Kapoor’s semi- evil rich father was Bart Bass, Alia Bhatt was channeling a Desi Blair Waldorf, Varun Dhawan was failing at being Chuck Bass despite his best efforts—a fun way to spend a boring evening. Towards the end though, we switched to something else.

“I don’t wanna see Rishi Kapoor die, dude,” I said to my sister.

“Picture hai, ghon- chu,” she retorted irritably but listened to me for once. In a strange twist of irony, Rishi Kapoor has passed away and I am typing these words. Like the news about Irrfan, it refuses to sink in. And as I try and process it, I can’t help but think about all the amazing performances he gave us.

The Mandakini-fan grandpa in Kapoor & Sons, the strict Sikh patriarch in Patiala House, the loving widower father in Raju Chacha (my first memory of watching him on screen)—my generation will remember and cherish him differently than our par- ents. To them, he was a romantic hero, the guy who always got the girl. To us, he will always be the quirky senior actor who made even quirkier characters come alive on screen.

Remember Rauf Lala from Agneepath? As the country prepares to come out of lockdown in stages, as the economy’s engine sputters back to cautious life, and as we hope and pray to avert further tragedy, let us take a moment to consider the importance of art in our personal and public lives. Films, music, and books allow us a temporary but much-needed escape from the starkness of reality. And the people who make it hap- pen are very human, very breakable, and very mortal.

When you watch Irrfan’s English Medium on your TV screens, see it as a dying man’s last love letter to his beloved art.

And then when the time comes, don’t be mad at your child when he or she tells you they want to be an actor or a writer or a singer. A society needs its dreamers, dramatists, directors and performers just as it needs its doctors and district magistrates.