Memories of 'Memories in March'

I made a great deal out of watching Rituporno Ghosh’s ‘Memories in March’ around the time it was released. I must have moved to Doha already, which is why a simple task of going to the nearest theater seemed like a daunting task, especially when you are yet to own a car. More so, when one is talking about a sensitive film like this one that addresses issues of homosexuality. Going by the fact that the theaters here did not screen 'Dirty Picture', this one, I realized, was quite out of question. Qatar is clearly not quite there yet.
In the hullabaloo of life this film too, like many other things, was forgotten.  And finally I made the most of a Saturday night and watched it online. And ever since I am so hung over by this film, which is why the urge to write about it.

“Sid is no more, he met with an accident, Don’t know if anybody informed you”, texts Aarti (Deepti Naval ), Sid’s mother, to her ex-husband, while she sits on Sid’s empty bed in his apartment. The movie is a master stroke in such heart wrenching moments of life, when a single mother is still struggling to come to terms with the loss of her only son. I relished on how Director Sanjoy Nag plays with the bare minimal, which reflects in the story he tells, the set, the dialogues and the three actors around whom the story revolves. For once, it is not important for the deceased to keep appearing in flashback, since it is not about him, it's about the ones who are left behind in very unusual circumstances, grappling with unusual situations. Aarti, who was in Delhi when the accident happened might never be  able to come to terms with the accident, but more importantly, with the fact that her son had a man for a lover, reveals Aarti to her dead son’s lover, Aournob. Aournob, played by ace director Rituporno Ghosh, is however, inconsistent and rather unintelligible from time to time and you would find yourself straining your ears very often to your dismay.

Aarti reads the last draft of her son's message on his phone wherein he lets out bit by bit what the conservative mother never got to know when he was still alive. This, however, is not the first instance in the film when she is told about her son’s sexual preference. Raima Sen plays the girl who was madly in love with Sid and she is endearing when she tells Aarti that, while the whole office talked about Sid-Aournob affair, she chose to remain silent since she believed “she owed that to Sid”. A shocked, guilty ridden mother doesn’t know how to deal with it all, who so far believed that her divorce must have been the worst experience of her life. In a particularly poignant moment, an otherwise modern working mother tells Aournob that her sarees are not a statement but that's who she actually is - old school, which also leads to sharing of many intimate details about Sid between Aarti and Aournob.

The film from here moves almost in a montage like sequence, giving sneak peeks into the mother's coming to terms with the reality, the lover and the friend of the deceased's  coming to terms with the fact that life has to go on and in the process finding Sid leaving a piece of him with each one of them. Aarti who came to collect Sid’s stuff now leaves with much more than his belongings.

All in all, 'Memories in March' is a soulful, sensitive and a realistic portrayal of the issue of alternate sex, sans the ‘goes with it’ dose of forced comic vein,, an over-the-top treatment of the subject, and the usual dose of the shock and awe tenor. A must watch simply for its no-nonsense, uncluttered presentation, just like Deepti Naval as Sid’s mother is!