In the air-conditioned confines of your city home, you watch Gullak on SonyLiv on the big TV and wish this Mishra ‘parivar’ was your family. The husband does not make millions, but his heart is bigger than your fancy millionaires' who book Teslas, buy NFT art and invest in cryptocurrencies. The mother hasn’t gone to watch a movie or taken a trip with women who have given in to their wanderlust… You’d be too embarrassed to take the sons to a pub or a coffee shop to ‘hang out’.
But should you visit this Mishra family, they will welcome you to their home and offer you their one bedroom (with an air conditioner) and they will sleep on the mosquito-infested terrace. The mother will cook you potatoes in rice or make samosas at home because it’s a special occasion. She’ll even make aloo parathas that look so good, you can almost taste them and smell them at home. The two lads will make you tea and serve it to you without ever complaining that it’s a ‘girl’s job’ (for this, the writers of the show need to be praised!), and perhaps even take you to the bridge and feed you chaat…
Most people who grew up in a neighbourhood where Bittu-ki-mummy will drop in at the most inopportune moments, talking loudly and asking the most embarrassing things without ever feeling that she’s intruding, this show is an ode to such neighbourhoods. And Sunita Rajwar is so, so, so amazing as Bittu-ki-mummy, she ought to get all kinds of awards. And she just might say as Jessica Rabbit does, ‘I’m not that neighbourhood aunty who is annoying, I’m just written that way.’
Gullak initially slipped under my radar (and I’ve kicked myself for it!) because it seemed like yet another small-town thing about middle-class people living in a house with dripping taps, crow-droppings on freshly washed clothes on the clothesline, old grannies coughing blood, men wearing banians (with sleeves and holes) and women fighting loudly… I’ve also had enough of political shenanigans of men wearing gold chains, sitting on charpois, smoking hookahs, giving orders to kill lots of poor folk…
I watched Gullak reluctantly and realised that I had finished the season without ever thinking that they were glorifying poverty. I had started worrying about Annu bhaiyya (Vaibhav Raj Gupta) who was working his backside off as a ‘karyakarta’ of a local political leader. I wanted to tell his dad, please go get your son, he’s going to be misled by ‘Prinsu bhaiyya’.
The younger lad is a dreamer and initially I just didn’t like the set-up of the lad who did not want to study. Aman (played quite well by Harsh Mayar) is that middle-class loser… and you want to scold him because you too think that his habit of staring out of the window in school, looking at the mali, then the hose, and the water and dreaming of the fish in that water tank (or something like that) is going to get him into lots of trouble at school. And poor mum and dad do not need any more problems than they’re facing right now.
The last time I have seen so much happiness in so little was in a Japanese movie called Shoplifters (2018, directed by Hirokazu Koreeda). In this show how the whole family works as a unit is a joy to behold. Every episode makes you believe that there really is such a thing as hope. Never do they suddenly find buried treasure, neither is there a promotion at the end of a ghastly day at work. But there’s hope in the adrak chai that the son makes (it is served in cups that don’t belong to the same family), there is hope in the ‘suno na!’ and the easy, ‘Remember those days when you used to laugh?’ and her answering in mock anger. ‘Then I got married to you!’... This may or may not be the dialogue from the show, but it could be what you have heard your parents say…
The writers Nikhil Vijay (season 1) and Durgesh Singh (season 2) need to be applauded. The writing in season 3 seems to be stretched a little, but then we are so used to caring for this family and their friends and neighbours that you don’t worry too much. The desperation you felt when you wanted to save the older brother from his political leader and hoped desperately that he would pass the exams in season 1, the happiness you felt when you realised that the ‘kitty party’ ladies actually cared about one another and were not just ladies who lunched (in season 2). The third season got a trifle preachy with the case of a young girl who quietly shows her helplessness in agreeing to marry the first guy her father has found for her because she’s the stone on her father’s heart, a responsibility… The simple joy of the first two seasons is practically gone in the third with the father getting suspended from his job for being honest. The lines written about middle-class lives on shame touch you but they take away from the fun of an episode called Sunday is for rest.
The father of this wonderful household is the very ordinary everyman called Jameel Khan. He’s the dad everyone should want. Caring and loving and yet stern. He’s the dad who wants to provide the world to his family but is happy to sidetrack them with kalakand…
It’s the mom of the house, the versatile actor who is not just a fantastic theatre actor, but makes any role (as the mean lawyer for the prosecution in the award-winning film Court, to the COVID office lady in a short film to a cop…) that she takes on simply unforgettable. This is Geetanjali Kulkarni. The mother she plays in Gullak loves her family. She ends up cooking, whether it is a holiday or not, and doesn’t say a word. She eats baraf ka gola with joy, she deals with Bittu-ki-mummy with a mixture of irritation and love. She has a war of words with her family that emerges from love instead of anger, and even though her kids correct her often, she is the queen of the house, marching past their surprised faces (they’re making plans to spend her ‘kitty’ money on different things) with a food processor which she has ordered for herself. There are so many moments that make this show a fabulous watch, a dialogue like this made by the mom (during another argument with her husband):
Mom: Now you’re going to drink and eat chicken and listen to that… That Javed Akhtar…
Her son interjects: Not Javed Akhtar, mom, Begum Akhtar!
Mom: Yes, yes! It’s all the same… Must be his sister!
This is just one of the great exchanges you will hear in this show. You will love each and every character. And hope that something good happens soon to them. Five episodes of season 3 go by really easily.
You come away with a stark reality and this wisdom shared with the Gullak (the piggy bank made of clay) stays with us long after the fifth episode is over: The middle class lives under public glare: whether he is happy or sad, sleeping on a full tummy or has skipped meals to make ends meet… It is said that when rich people go through a bad phase that becomes passing news, but when the Everyman falls on bad times, the neighbours, the paanwala, his relatives, and the whole community will never let him forget it…
In a world where we suffer from distances - both literal and figurative - from our families, a show like Gullak really makes you smile from the bottom of your heart.
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