Written by Tejas Shende and Aarya Pathak
On the surface, Sabar Bonda is many things. It is a delicate exploration of grief, a tender queer love story set in rural India, and a beautiful mother-son tale. But if one decodes it and rips apart the adjectives, at its heart, it is an observation. Observation of a portrait.
We observe Anand (Bhushaan Manoj) frozen in time. The pace of life in his village compliments how time flows in grief: Sleepy, steady, and ever-present. Unlike Mumbai, here, Anand experiences time. He thinks and feels knowing that he is thinking and feeling. And the film observes this (rather beautiful!) portrait, — “Anand in grief” — from different angles, from different perspectives. The canvas is a caste-based Hindu society where death itself can’t escape the rituals and notion of purity. Death in this society is a trap of mechanical actions usually dictated by elders in the community. What to wear, what to eat, what not to eat, whether to go out or not to go out, these actions are all governed and surveilled. The portrait depicts survival. His relatives try to paint it with their expectations, his mother lets him paint it the way he wants to, and Anand himself just wants to sleep and “dream” through the process. Driven by love, carved by his time with Balya (Suraaj Suman), the portrait transforms into a sculpture.
Balya’s position in this village system is established by his work, relationship with other villagers and with Anand’s cousin. Feeling stuck in the two-dimensional spaces of his relatives’ flat-walled houses, Anand longs to step out. Not just longs; he needs it. And Balya becomes the one who helps him do that, both literally and figuratively. Through encounters with Balya, he unfolds this close-knit village and its claustrophobia.
Everything he is not allowed to do in the house, he does it with Balya. Through Balya, he enters a new world within the same old world. In the same world, there is Balya’s friend who regularly meets him at night, hinting at his other world of “cruising” in urban lingo. In the other world, there are trees under which two men can make out in peace, and mainly, there is Balya, who talks and listens with utmost empathy.
But even in this world within the world, things are not as liberating as they seem. Through Balya, we also see the limits. Anand’s parents are accepting of his sexuality and agency, but Balya’s are not. Far from imagining “coming out”, Balya is struggling to stay unmarried. There may be other queer men around, yet they do not see it as something lasting. They do not allow themselves to be vulnerable. “Here, people just want to do it and leave. It is nice talking to someone,” he says. Balya knows that even if he gives Anand the space to mourn properly, there is no space for him to be who he is in that world. Balya needs Anand as much as Anand needs him, perhaps even more. And it is here that the real synthesis of the film lies. A moment suspended under the tree, both of them understand what is lacking in their two worlds.
The suspended moment under the tree foreshadows the moment of Anand’s release — his bursting into a cry when he reaches back home to Mumbai with Balya. In the small home of Anand and his mother, Balya holds Anand close while the latter makes sense of this death. Finally, it feels like the portrait is finished; the third dimension it needed was love.
What does it mean for them to be in the city? Is it conflict or comfort?
Cities carry the possibility to be constantly questioned and put to the test. They can also jump out of the maps and plans of an architect or planners and can be imagined, painted and sung by artists, shayars and lovers. They can be defined by migrants’ imaginations and desires, holding space for becoming.
A city is a giant organism, ever-evolving. The parts that make the whole are infinitely changing, and hence, they can afford the anonymity they need to peacefully exist. Contrary to their suffocating presence in the village, this gives them the power to be unknown.
And even though this anonymity can be double-faced, for Anand and Balya, it’s comforting. It takes them to a point where they feel liberated in a crammed-up apartment. The claustrophobia is not placed in the humid city but in the airy village. The suffocation there is so overwhelming that the characters are forced to become anomalies to its structure.
This is why, in the end, even if the geography is ironic, the ability to be who they are is the real liberation. “Balya will feel suffocated there; he is used to this place”: Anand’s doubts increase after relatives confront him with this argument. But deep down, he knows that this is the truth of migration.
This migration is driven by desire — to belong, to be anonymous, to escape, to defy. And although queer narratives in cities have not yet fully comprehended this truth, Anand and Balya are willing to take that risk. They are willing because in the city, they aren’t anomalies. They are just themselves.
Shende and Pathak are filmmakers
