‘No mother is perfect’, the film preaches, but perhaps it’s trying to warn us that like the mothers in the biopic, it too is not going to be perfect, or even try to.
Introduction
Shakuntala Devi is a cult figure among Indians, particularly among fairly well-off families with a bent towards professional education like engineering and medicine as an ideal career path. This is perhaps ironic considering the nature of her trade as a performer, but her position as a figure of popularity among this class helps us to understand not just Devi herself as a personality, but the audience this film is geared towards. When it addresses them, it therefore chooses a particular set of issue to tackle, and a whole other set of issues to ignore.
Leaving Family Behind
The film begins with Devi as a child, surprising her brother with her mathematical ability. This section of the film highlights the first recurring motif- Devi’s anger towards her mother for ‘remaining quiet’, especially when her sister dies. This is a very difficult issue for Indian films geared to such an audience to deal with- ‘family values’ are so sacred in the caste-based society of the urban ‘middle class’ that any idea of disrespecting a mother or a father is sacrilegious. It’s perhaps that fear of backlash that stops the film from going beyond just showing Devi’s rage and actually going into what it is that her mother was silent about. It hints at the fact that her father didn’t work and ‘used’ Devi’s shows to earn money, but the role of her father is never explicitly understood, except a throwaway comment that Devi is ‘the father of the house’ bringing in money.
Establishing the Feminist
The next section goes through Devi’s early adult life, starting with her first romance in Bangalore with a rich man with a British job (Devi herself being from a poorer family). This romance is briefly depicted, but the focus is on how it ends- she discovers he is engaged and shoots him (in the ear). This is a brilliant and romping start to the no-holds-barred unabashed existence of Devi, through a quite hilarious comedic moment. It establishes that she will not accept an arranged marriage within her own caste, opting for what would be seen as a fairly radical path of ‘love’ instead, the first of the many indications of the thorough feminism she embodied. Her move to the UK, and her encounter with her next (implied) lover Javier continues this trend, as she establishes herself as the ‘human computer’, the moniker she is widely known to adopt.
The Tricks of Her Trade
The mathematical montages can indeed begin to get dry around this point, as we continue to see roots on a chalkboard and long lists of numbers being recited with repeated ‘Correct!’s and ‘How do you do it?!’s. It fails to impress a viewer who is already aware of Devi’s talent, and doesn’t add anything particularly interesting to that portrayal. I’ll spend a moment here to discuss the overall representation of Devi’s ‘trade’, if I may use the term. The psychological study done by Jensen on Devi’s talent is portrayed in the film with a little touch of comedy. The psychologist utters a range of technical jargon in English, which if one goes through slowly actually makes sense, but when the character Devi asks him to clarify what they mean, the psychologist ends with an answer to the question repeated in the preceding montage: ‘We don’t know how you do it!’, and Vidya Balan chimes in with her gleeful chortle that gets everyone laughing. If we look at what the jargon said, however, it is very much what the actual study conducted on Devi’s abilities said- Devi did not have an exceptional ability for mathematical calculation, but brilliant procedural recall- a few tricks up her sleeve, if you will. The truth is while everyone likes to talk of Devi as a comparison to Einstein, their trades are very different. Devi is fundamentally a performer. This is not to diminish the extraordinary nature of her talent or work in any way- in fact, she herself was quite open about this. She has published her tricks in the Joy of Numbers and had always said her love was for math and calculation. When the film attempts to gloss over this by attempting to create an air of divine mystery around Devi’s talent, it almost clouds the talent in itself. The choice to make various allusions to what she does being Vedic mathematics is also generally misplaced. While she used some tricks attributed to the Vedas, a lot of them were from different sources, perhaps many her own. A film that acknowledged the nature of Devi’s trade would have been more honest with its audience about who Devi was, and what she can mean as a popular figure for the people. Choosing the mysterious Vedic genius image is a confusing rewriting of the clear talent that Devi had, but perhaps Bollywood’s preference for superior divinity as the puppet-master in its plot rather than humanistic personalities guided by their willpower was not a beast this film would take on. This is not to say Devi was herself free of all these ‘divine’ influences. She was a Brahmin by social upbringing, and later in her life spent a lot of time as an astrologer- using her ‘siddhi’ as the film calls it.
‘I’m Rich’
This montage of mathematical success also shows Devi’s rise in material wealth. This is brought up at other points in the film as well as an attribute she’s proud of, with the film’s classic humour delivery mechanism of cheek- ‘I’m rich’ she says with a grin. The film tries to draw a narrative of a rags to riches story- that Devi has earned this through sheer determination and talent. This is a familiar trope and the trope has received ample criticism by itself elsewhere, but it would be worth repeating here that Devi had caste privileges of her own. And not denying her incredible talent, any deification and attachment of success to material wealth only pushes a false idea that poverty is the poor’s fault and a state of failure.
The Right Family Dynamic
As she becomes successful, she settles down in London, but we learn that Javier is leaving her. The film uses this moment to make an important point about gendered relations that is always relevant- that men need not be the ones providing, and women the ones taking in a relationship. That a woman should not have to ‘need’ a man in anyway, at least materially. This ‘breakup’ is followed up by the introduction to Paritosh Banerjee, Devi’s to-be husband. Full of ‘cheeky’ comments that a liberal feminist would approve like ‘I have 150 lovers in 150 countries’, her desire to travel regardless of others’ opinions and ‘I want a baby not a husband’, Devi asserts her position as a woman who will ask for what she wants, and she appears to get it, settling down in Calcutta with her husband, and a child, on her terms. Her frustration soon bubbles to the top, however, as she wants to return to her shows and her maths, which her husband is very supportive of, without any indication that he should be praised for being supportive- a refreshing family dynamic to be portrayed. However, this moment shows the first point of conflict that will begin in Devi’s life, and what forms the main plot of the movie.
While the film goes through her life till this point, it also shows us a parallel narrative- Devi’s daughter, Anu, grown up and married and hating her mother (Devi) and deciding she should never have children so as to avoid what her own mother did to her. The film then takes us through Anu’s childhood. After Devi restarts her shows, Anu keeps growing, and Devi feels like she is missing her child, that it is her right to have Anu with her. Devi returns and demands that Paritosh and Anu tour with her, pointing out that if it was the man who was the genius it might have been more acceptable. Paritosh refuses to come himself, but Anu is taken along. During this time, the film shows Anu being taught everything Devi loves, to become a little version of her mother- the math, the sheer thirst for being right and succeeding and the unabashed ambition. But Anu also missed her father, whose letters Devi has kept from her to avoid confusing the young Anu. This culminates in teen rage at an event where Devi calls Paritosh, her ex-husband by that point, a homosexual.
Devi, the queer ally
This point in the film is worth talking about. Devi’s work The World of Homosexuals was an incredible project for its time. Specially for someone of her fame to use her connections to highlight such an issue, in a manner that wasn’t very self-congratulatory either, but actually highlighting real accounts of homosexual people and set out the research at the time. By today’s standards it is clearly dated, but it is important to remember Devi called for complete acceptance, not just tolerance. The film appears to fail Devi’s own vision by using this book as a crutch for the main plot to develop its conflict. What we know as the public in reality is that Devi said Paritosh was a gay man, and Devi was quite understanding of that, an incredible feat for the wife of a closeted man. This is what inspired her to write the book. The film says that what Devi said was a lie, which makes little sense unless the producers know something we don’t about their personal lives (which I doubt), which puts to shame a lot of the feminist cliches that ran through the film since the start since the film does not want to treat its protagonist’s real-life counterpart’s words with trust. It says that the lie was to make people sympathetic to the cause by making it a personal story, which almost appears reasonable and noble, but ridiculous in practice- for if anything, the fear of one’s own husband being homosexual would make people want to ‘control’ the behaviour more. More importantly, since this appears to be the scriptwriter’s decision, one should consider how it plays on screen for people to see this incredible ally being a liar. Does it play well for favour to be won through manipulation? Either way, Anu storms out at this lie, this ‘accusation’ as she (or the film’s script, rather) calls it. This acts as the culmination of Anu’s rage against her mother for distancing her from her father. It should be noted Paritosh’s reaction in the script is a ‘so what?’, indicating that there is nothing wrong with being one, but that Devi is a ‘storm’ who does what she wants. The teen conflict with Anu ends of course, with Devi giving up her shows to spend more time with her, and allowing Paritosh back into her life. This begins a good phase in their relationship once again. The entire sequence lays waste to the uniqueness of the moment that her book was by using it as a simple plot device.
Motherhood
Soon Anu meets her eventual husband, Ajay through Devi’s many famous parties and a little happy sequence ensues where the two become engaged. This is the point at which the conflict between Anu and Devi resurfaces- Devi expects that both of them will shift to London with her, whereas the couple want to live in their own house in Bangalore. The confrontation with Ajay reaches a peak with Devi pointing to her C-section scar, the three inches of stitches Devi repeatedly mentions in the film that gives her a ‘right’ over Anu. This moment is a clear shot at symbolising a mother’s pain and sacrifice, in terms of bodily integrity, but also her career and her ambitions, in order to maintain a relationship with her daughter. This possessiveness is what leads to Anu cutting her mother off as she marries Ajay and they stay separately.
The next development in the film is introduced through Anu’s motherhood- a surprise pregnancy that she carries with a hopeful apprehension. Anu’s role as a mother, balancing the ‘duties’ of childcare with her job, is made difficult by expectations placed on her of being with her child, at the risk of being guilted. She is told that losing a career should not be regretted, but enjoyed. It’s Anu’s motherhood that makes her want to forgive her own mother, Devi, finally. In a parallel, as Devi is estranged from her daughter, and realises the difficulty of being a good mother, she thinks back to her own family and returns to the cottage, appearing to forgive her. After a brief scene that involves an unnecessary legal case at that point, the two forgive each other, ending with the message- that no mother is perfect, and that the mistake the both of them made was they saw their mothers as mothers, not women. The push is clear: Devi and Anu both saw the tough balancing task placed on women, and Devi’s mother had that task too. This is an important message indeed- for us to carry personally in being able to contextualise who our parents are, especially our mothers, in the society and conditions they were born in. It’s not uncommon to fail to acknowledge their ambitions as their own. Indeed it’s not as simple as children being accepting of terrible childhoods- after all there is some responsibility in child-bearing. Often that responsibility falls easily on the mother, but the movie attempts to show that even with an apparently supportive partner (the reasons for separation are cloudy in the film), there are still always complicated trade-offs that single parents, or potentially even coupled parents will be making. Indeed the next logical step might even be to consider what it means to bring a child into the world when such trade-offs appear to be inevitable, but that is a question the movie is not bothered with (not to its detriment), focusing instead on what to do once we’re here- and the answer is to remember, ‘not every mother is perfect’.
Performances and the Film
Vidya Balan disappoints in the role, though it might be a director or a script’s fault. A particularly cringe-worthy moment is the overdramatic scream-sob when she sees her mother’s shawl that almost seemed timed like a jump scare rather than nostalgia and mourning tinged with regret. Her laugh makes her character endearing and she pulls off Devi’s incredible style with great confidence as it should be done.
Sanya Malhotra performs the best in the cast, with biting rage at her husband that works only through the eyes when she must be silent because her in-laws are visiting, and subtle but clear displays of fairly complex emotions- though once again, the script has probably allowed only her character to gain any amount of complexity to play with.
The other flitting characters provide as much as you expect a Bollywood movie of this style to provide- passable, but lacklustre.
The production design and costumes did a fairly good job. They haven’t reinvented the wheel, but they have pulled off Bollywood’s cheesy period look with a refreshing and pleasing veneer with its charming, bright colour pallette.
The film is not a must-watch, but a decent family film for a dull day.
Mihir Rajamane 
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