Basu Chatterjee’s Khatta Meetha is India’s version of Modern Family, but with all the problematic tropes

When Modern Family premiered in 2009, the show presented some unorthodox familial relationships that work out because at the base of it all, the thing that holds a family together is love. That, in essence, is the underlying sentiment of Basu Chatterjee’s 1978 Khatta Meetha. An unconventional family comes together and amid their disagreements, they find that it’s their love for each other that keeps them together. But, all of this happens with gender stereotypes in place that have just not aged well.

Khatta Meetha opens with a family where a single mother Nargis (played by Pearl Padamsee) with three grown-up kids is handling all the household chores and with some money left by her dead husband, she is somehow making the finances work. The kids are adults but have no empathy for their mother who is running around from dusk to dawn. The other family has a single father Homi (played by Ashok Kumar) taking care of his four sons (whose ages range from 20-something to 7) and is tired of cooking, cleaning and maintaining his job at the factory. Nargis is told to get married so she can have a man in the house to do the ‘man jobs’ and Homi is told to get married so a woman can take care of the household chores. This is a marriage of convenience and we’re never fooled into thinking that this has anything to do with love. Every time the family sings “Thoda Hai Thode Ki Zarurat Hai”, the film makes itself believe that this is the story of the common man who is always struggling with his means.

On the surface, Khatta Meetha might seem like a harmless, innocent film that is designed to appeal to the good-heartedness of a regular middle class family. But the movie casually ignores the tropes that it introduces and turns it into plot points. Nargis’ daughter is shown to be a woman in her late 20s who has severe body image issues. We are told that this is somehow the cause for her being unmarried so the first guy who walks into her life and blatantly says that he could marry anyone, as long as it’s a woman, becomes her husband.

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One of Homi’s sons, who could have a job at the factory, chooses to sit idle and is always asking his father for some money. Another son of Nargis is a grown up and despite being told that he needs to contribute to the household, he spends all his money and energy chasing after a girl. This causes more harm than good as it ultimately gets them thrown out of their house and gets Homi fired from his job.

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The film makes a very clear divide between gender roles and sticks to them. At no point does a character question why they are clinging to the conventional wisdom of the society when they, in fact, are living by their own rules.

Khatta Meetha has a simple facade but watching it in 2023, the film makes it clearer that just slapping on the tag of a family does not make one’s problems disappear, no matter how hard the filmmaker preaches so.

Sampada Sharma

Sampada Sharma has been the Copy Editor in the entertainment section at Indian Express Online since 2017. ... Read More