One day Sandhya finds herself casting aspersions on Akanksha, wrongly accusing her of sleeping with her husband through the course of her marriage — a claim Akanksha vehemently refutes. And excellent acting all around kept me engrossed. From hereon, even the faintest sight of love was met by her with a hearty amusement. I actually liked the movie – the small vignettes, not quite whole. We don’t know how he dies. It means theist, believer. “PTSD,” pathologized; said one relative! There are awkward “character-quirk” scenes like the one where an elder objects to Sandhya’s Muslim friend being in the house (“ghar ko shuddh rakhna hai”), and… CUT TO the same man pouring himself a peg. Option 1 – Sanya : ” Dhokha toh usne tumko bhi kabhi nahi diya” Pagglait opens on the day of Astik’s cremation and then stays on, like a significant relative, till the terahvin — the 13th day when the soul, as per Hindu beliefs, takes off heaven-wards. Left astounded by her own inability to discern her own emotions; she confesses to her friend Nazia that she had more acutely felt loss when her cat had died. Akanksha was to Sandhya the missing piece in the puzzle, the obstruction that disabled their communion. By Jinal Bhatt | March 26, 2021. We don’t meet Astik. When Sayani said to Sanya “Usne tumhe kabhi dhokha nahi diya” ( Log Out /  Which is why they hardly spoke. If it wasn’t for the unbearable surplus enjoyment that she derived from reconstructing Akanksha and Astik’s relationship, she would probably not have found the desire to desire again. She was acutely aware of her lackadaisical response to her husband’s death. "Pagglait" follows Sandhya, played by Sanya Malhotra, a woman struggling to mourn the death of her husband, Astik. And his wife Sandhya (Sanya Malhotra). She nonchalantly lay on the bed, yawning away through a series of disingenuously “copy-pasted” RIP messages. It then morphs into one of mild envy that Akansha was able to receive the love that she never got. Five months after a broken relationship, he hadn’t moved on and then, he died. How I wished the film had followed this Bridges of Madison County-like trajectory, of discovering a person whose secrets are so hidden that you realise you never really knew them! The ending makes it seem that we’ve been watching an emancipation drama. Melancholy and Act. “Not quite that much of an emancipation when she gives the guys’ parents most of her insurance money” – This is a complicated bit, which is also the mark of a mature film which, while being inflicted with Ayushmann Khuranaisation, still rises above it. All that she was left with were memories and experiences that had never been actualised in his lifetime. Sanya Malhotra on writing a lot while prepping for upcoming film, Pagglait Actor Sanya Malhotra says she wrote a journal to understand her character Sandhya’s complex feelings in Pagglait… The monstrosity of her inner void begins to distract her from the progressive disintegration of her lifeworld. The shock around the insurance policy of the dead man. Right from Astik’s parents Shivendra (Ashutosh Rana) and Usha (Sheeba Chadha) to his brother Alok (Chetan Sharma), every character complements what the film is trying to say. Pagglait takes us close to the marriage-crazy culture of our society. She finds herself actively pursuing Akanksha, scavenging for details about her relationship with Astik. One of the small bits of irony in Umesh Bist’s Pagglait – or maybe it’s more a small bit of black comedy – is the name of the dead man. Her madness reflected a madness in the heart of the system and she recognises the sublimity of her own loss of belongingness in her own subjective universe, imposed by an external accident! At the outset it may appear that Pagglait presents to us in Sandhya, an unruly character, who unapologetically embodies a refusal to comply with the normative constructs of grief and rejects conforming to rituals of mourning. For her to be free and uninhibited again, she had to be unencumbered by the act of loss, work of mourning as well as the melancholic attachment with her husband’s abstinence. Apart from its subtle commentary on contemporary reality depicted through a north Indian joint family that comes together to mourn Astik’s death, Pagglait is also about acceptance and closure. He is deeply embarrassed and pained that he was tricked into asking the insurance company to change the nominee in exchange for a bribe. Like how some people are described asexual, maybe she was… “a-romantic”. Pagglait: Sanya Malhotra Opens Up About Her Character In The Film, Says She Used To Write A Lot As Sandhya. The overwhelming presence of desire but the absence of its expression had burdened her capacity to truly grieve and even, experience love. The only truly sad folks were the deceased’s parents. It was in fact the nothingness of our collective being that got reflected in the nothingness of Sandhya’s inanimate response to an intimate loss. The politics within the family. Sanya Malhotra starrer dark-comedy Pagglait is streaming on Netflix. And since the father has been fair to her, her decision to be compassionate towards him becomes an easier one to make. I used to write a lot when I was prepping for 'Pagglait': Sanya Malhotra These are two are very emotionally mature characters, Delhi-born Malhotra said.During the course of the film, Sandhya is inspired by Akansha, who drives a car, lives independently, is a working woman, and is well groomed.Eventually, she comes to understand why Astik loved Akansha. That quality really kicks in when Sandhya befriends the lover. The incompleteness of their marriage was forever lost to a non-existent potential of consummation. Maybe she’s just one of those who’s still in shock, still numb, and one day it will all burst out of her like lava. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated. Then its the Golgappas outside. It is her subjective excess, the act of reading into Astik’s love life with Akanksha — which renews her desire to live. The subject does not exist except as a locus on the matrix of the social-symbolic order. Their loss compounded by the uncertainty of their future without their sole support..I truly felt sorry for them. When she has found what she has lost, she would be able to grieve it. She wants Pepsi. Edited by Jacques Alain Miller, W.W. Norton & Company, 1975. She playfully condemns her late husband’s soul, “Tanga rahega ulta ped mein!” (Let him hang by the tree!) Navayana, 2013. He also regards Sandhya as his daughter by virtue of being the d-i-l. Earlier, Malhotra revealed that she kept a journal while prepping character Sandhya in the film Pagglait.… Blushing at the beauty of perceiving love around her, her meeting with Akanksha had aroused in her a new curiosity and passion for the world. 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Well, the Thing that he (or those who named him) believed in has decided that – despite all that belief – it’s time Astik left this world. Kyoki Dhokha dene ke liye kisi rishte ka hona lazmi hai”. And perhaps because I once knew a family like this one, suffocating a friend who couldn’t breathe without asking permission, it rang true for me. She therefore, redoubles the deception of not knowing what her husband was upto all the while that he did not bother to care about her through the course of their marriage, this fantasy support — of his apparent extra-marital affair — then lends the cushion for acceptance. All throughout, Sandhya is consumed by anxiety, an anxiety that is both greater than and irreducible to her incapacity to grieve and/or feel jealous. Loving herself in third person, she was able to experience the tranquility of pleasure. She starts looping on Akanksha’s relationship with Astik. She experiences loss as a profound emptiness, which fails to find representation in language or expression. But his presence is felt throughout. Just like that, one’s life ends and others’ gets altered dramatically, shaped by the imprint of the loss of shared space. Widowed soon after her marriage, the protagonist of Pagglait, Sandhya (Sanya Malhotra) struggles to comprehend the loss of her husband of barely five months. Amol Palekar's movie Anaahat (2003), a Marathi film (Anaahat means Eternity), poses several questions about Niyog Pratha and emphasises on a woman's choice to explore her sexual freedom. A good example of that is the character … tonks: I interpreted her offer of future support as more of a message to the uncles accusing her of ‘insurance fraud’. It is by accident that Sandhya stumbles upon a photo of Akanksha (his ex-lover) while gleaning through Astik’s office files. Bist’s storytelling delves into what drives Sandhya’s psychological indifference at Astik’s demise with out turning the movie into bleak fare. © FII Media Private Limited | All rights reserved. She is hyper-aware of the inappropriateness of her bearings but is unable to confront the loss of all her own moorings. By Radhika Sharma (Eds: Recasting overnight story) New Delhi, Mar 24 (PTI) Actor Sanya Malhotra says she wrote a journal to understand her character Sandhya''s complex feelings in "Pagglait… Only, it’s not about Sandhya’s emancipation, as the film seems to think. The film unravels the process of grief, as an open-ended closure — tracing it from the initial shock of denial, to the work of melancholic attachment to release from mourning. Stemming from emotional distress of “not knowing” one’s partner, she found it difficult to leap over her misery. Verso, 2001. (Was it an attempt to show her in a positive light, despite her escape). How Do International Financial Institutions Encourage Instrumentalisation? Eventually, Sandhya demands a retelling and recounting of the memories that Akanksha Roy shared with her late partner, Astik. The argument then would be that Sandhya is mature enough to understand that hating her husband for cheating on her and also pocketing ALL his insurance money is kinda hypocritical, Yes, I do agree that they deserved a share of the insurance money, and it is plausible that any fair person would have seen that. After exhibiting her prowess in acting over her five years of career, the actor is playing a solo lead for the first time on screen. But I have liked Sanya Malhotra in everything I have seen of her so far. I used to write a lot when I was prepping for 'Pagglait': Sanya Malhotra Actor Sanya Malhotra says she wrote a journal to understand her character Sandhya''s complex feelings in "Pagglait… He couldn’t marry the woman he loved; and couldn’t love the woman he married. (I still haven’t been able to catch Ramprasad ki tehrvi.). Zizek, Slavoj. It is here that she begins to see things for what they are. It is here where the beginning of her melancholic desire can be traced. All she had were memories of him and Akanksha to vicariously experience to compensate for her own lack of memories. The ritualistic context of setting Astik’s soul free is paralleled to Sandhya’s journey of setting herself free. Even the subplots feel as superfluous as some of the supporting characters. Sandhya had done her MA in English but her post-marriage life revolved around the scarcely loved world that her husband had created for her. Unable to grieve the loss of her husband, she was rather unconsciously performing the burial of her own dreams that died with him, surcharged with the fear of staleness of her youthful eagerness to love. This used to be the Rajshri films category with mandatory Alok Nath appearance. The Sublime Object of Ideology. The moment she allowed herself to exhaust her desire for Astik by encircling around the fantasy of him cheating on her, she was able to reconcile with his lack of desire in their marriage in Pagglait. But the counter-argument to that could be that Arth was sitting in the lavish upper-middle class settings of New Delhi while this is set in a conservative, indeed patriarchal, family in Lucknow. She starts visiting his office, goes to places that the two visited on dates. Grief has become one of the most sought out subjects of modern filmmakers, and especially in India, with large and dramatic families, grief has different forms and outlets. My main issue with the movie is similar to what BR wrote, which is that outside of Sandhya, and the Sandhya-Akansha dynamic, all other characters and their arcs are written as one note with no room for any variants. I agree too that the multiplex/Ayushmann Khurana-isation of the film took the sting off what could have been a more powerful film. It is in that moment that she verbalised the lack of sexual engagement in her own marriage and was able to get that weight off of her chest. 'Pagglait' also stars Raghubir Yadav, Sheeba Chaddha, Meghna Malik, Rajesh Tailang, Jameel Khan, Aasif Khan and Shrutii Sharma. Pagglait, is a beautifully portrayed film that meticulously yet with a delicate approach touches upon the various emotions of its characters in a rather ominous situation – the sudden death of a 28-year-old Astik Giri, the eldest son of the family. I didnt see the Sandhya-Akansha dynamic as one of Sandhya trying to figure out who her husband was. Pagglait, now streaming on Netflix, begins with a funeral. She realises her own desires independent of him as a way to re-inscribe herself within the hegemonic logic of the world of meaningful existence, from which she had been de-centred. A man has died. Also Read: Aranya: Both Rana and the elephants deserved a better film. But it also evoked the way Arth ended for me. There is neither any flashback nor any photograph. Pagglait Review: Sanya Malhotra Film About Grief Makes A Crazy Good Case For Non-Conformism To Societal Norms. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Freud, Sigmund. Biriyani, screened at the 11th Indian Film Festival, Bhubaneshwar, is a stark reminder of the relative, and absolute position of a woman, within the Muslim samajam, society in Kerala today. The word Astik means a theist; someone who has a belief in the existence of god. It is only after tarrying with the negative force of death’s utter dismemberment, it’s absolute meaninglessness that Sandhya is able to ground herself again. First its the Pepsi and chips at home. But, ‘Pagglait’ isn’t flippant in its method both. Change ), 15 Responses “Pagglait is driven by Sanya Malhotra, whose character gets a subplot that should have been the actual movie” →. Sandhya starts hanging out with the lover and says something that broke my heart: “Kuch purani yaadein maang rahi hoon.” (I just want some old memories from you, so that I reconstruct, at least in my mind, a flesh-and-blood human being out of this robot I thought I was married to). 2000. The attempt to get Sandhya remarried. At the same time, I am not sure I could sit through a whole movie about it…. Umesh Bist’s Pagglait is partly realistic, partly dramatic and partly comedic. Plays complex character of a young widow, who can’t shed tears after the death of her husband, Astik “Lot of thoughts went behind it, one of those that probably she was not in a happy marriage." In refusing to surrender herself to the mercy of her parents and in-laws, she regained her self-confidence. Amidst the flurry of messages that poured into social media to express condolences, Sandhya was busy accounting for the number of likes as anyone would except on the occasion of the death of their husband. After all, she does say how devastated she was when she was a little girl and her cat died. I also did not mind at all that Sandhya’s emancipation was just a subplot. That said, there were at least enough glimpses of it to keep it going – like the negotiation of ownership over the dead Astik between Sandhya and Akanksha. Or maybe she really is not all that shocked and numbed. On this Republic Day, let us take a look at the fifteen powerful women who helped draft the Indian Constitution. Also liked how Sandhya, the wife, can’t grieve, but Aakansha, the ex, grieves like a wife would. She finally melts into tears on the 13th day, when Astik’s remains were to be removed from the house as a metaphor for dissolution of the soul into air. The other thing is with the marriage having only lasted five months before Astik’s death, there is a lingering feeling (suggested by the others to Astik’s father which he rejects) that Sandhya didn’t really earn the insurance claim even if she is legally entitled to all of it. Wokeness moving into that domain is in itself a welcome development. It is possible that he had no inkling of how Astik cheated on her. In a distorted way, her failure to grieve becomes her expression of grief. As Akanksha relives her memories, Sandhya rewrites hers. There’s the attempt to be all whimsical (how about the view of a rickshaw driver’s shifting bum as he pedals from side to side?). She never even had one of those college crushes that many of us will remember long into the age we will forget how to tie our shoelaces. 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