Suresh Triveni’s Jalsa, streaming on Amazon Prime Video from March 18, 2022, is about intersecting motherhood. An ageing mother and grandmother (Rohini Hattangadi) is both succour and pillar of support for single mother Maya Menon (Vidya Balan), a successful and endlessly striving TV journalist, who is mother to Ayush (Surya Kasibhatia), a developmentally challenged pre-teen boy. Ruksana (Shefalee Shah), the trusted and loved domestic help at the Menon household, is mother to two children—a teenaged daughter and a son who is the same age as Ayush. Without spelling it out, Triveni convinces us in the first few scenes of the film that Ruksana is also Ayush’s mother—in the way she dotes on the boy and tirelessly takes care of him.
When Ruksana’s daughter meets with a fatal hit-and-run accident, her world turns upside down. The accident changes Maya’s life too—spiralling her into a maelstrom that tests her courage and sense of ethics, and exposes a serrated vulnerability otherwise safely ensconced in a life, that, when the film begins, appears perfectly in control. More of the story would be giving away too much; suffice to say it is a psychological thriller treated with surprising tenderness without diverting attention from the tragic molten core that unites and breaks apart the two women.
Triveni earlier directed Tumhari Sulu (2017), also with Balan in the lead. He is co-writer here, and through taut dialogues, understated but powerful dramatic moments and a searingly effective sound design, Triveni is able to bring out the battered interiority of his two protagonists. It is a triumphant film that not only understands motherhood in all its tenderness and ferocity, but is at ease with the rich emotional experience of the feminine.
Triveni builds the film on two stunning performances—although Balan is the main character around whom the action of the story unfolds, both she and Shah are the spine and soul of Jalsa. Balan has been a box office force long enough—before the streaming explosion changed the way actors, especially women actors, can flourish given compelling material and longer screen time, Balan has headlined several hits. With streaming, her talent, naturally attuned to roles that require immersiveness in the Indian Everywoman mould, can reach new heights. Jalsa is an example of that. Balan carries off her role with the perfect balance of restraint and emotional grist. She portrays Maya as a character authentically with all the world she inhabits—and the risks, pains and power inherent in it.
In Ruksana, Shah lends a grainy fortitude that can exist only with tenderness and insecurity—given her set of struggles as a woman and mother with meagre means. Ruksana’s sensitivity and emotional devotion to the differently-abled boy of her employer, her having to nurture her bodily-maimed teenaged daughter to some semblance of a life, and her sudden confrontation of a truth that transforms kindness into a kind of quiet vengeance—the arc of Shah’s character is more layered, and so more difficult to perform. She does it with some amount of histrionics, but what elevates it is the way she uses her body, especially her face and eyes, to convey the gamut of emotions that her character demands.
It is wonderful to watch Hattangadi in a film after several years—and she delivers the role of the eloquent, plain-speaking and caring ageing mom with a breezy confidence.
Triveni’s visual scheme for the film is one of contrasts—moving seamlessly from the city saturated by the monsoons, the clutter and din of slum life and the neat, unspeckled sameness of news studios and upper middle class homes. The sound design and music are crucial in building the story momentum, leading to a dreamlike, terrifying and poetic end that powerfully distills the film’s emotional core.
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