English-
Vinglish is not at all about English! It is about identity crisis of a typical
Indian middle class housewife. Indian moms are inevitable part of the family,
without them dads can’t go to office, children couldn’t go to school, and
mother or father in laws couldn’t get their tea at awkward hour of the day! In
short, mom is the axis around which the life of all other family members revolves.
It is hard to imagine a good family life without a dedicated mom behind it! We
all are so used to her that we forget that she too has life, she too has emotions,
and she too needs love and respect. In fact lots of love and a little respect
is all she wants for what she does for her family from before dawn till late
night!
A girl gives away
lots of other things than just her youth in being a mother. She has to abandon her
dreams still unfulfilled, her carrier and above all her freedom. But she doesn’t
simply give away all of these, she invests all her dreams into her stillborn
child. She transfers all her dreams and thoughts to her stillborn while talking
with her bulged belly. A child is an embodiment of unfulfilled dreams of its
parents. Parents and especially mothers sacrificed a lot in making a child’s
life. She adorns her child’s life with all the amenities she never got, she
trims her monthly budget to relocate some funds for her child’s education or
fashionable clothes so her child would not have to feel ashamed among the
friends. With time children grow older but not mother. Now children seem to
have taken everything her mother does for them as granted, its her duty to love
them, to feed them, to take good care of them. They don’t actually realize that their mother
sacrificed her Diwali sarees so, that they can give treat to their friends in
subways or coffee café day!! Not all children are mature enough to understand
and grateful enough to remember what their parents sacrificed for making their
lives better.
English-Vinglish
is the story of a Marathi middle aged woman who loved her husband and her
children so much that she keeps performing her “duties” towards them while not
rewarded with enough respect. Her husband thinks that she couldn’t do anything
else than making delicious laddoos and her daughter was ashamed of her as she
does not know enough English to talk to her teachers in the parents teachers
meeting in convent school. Now, this is ghar
ghar ki kahani in urban areas all over India. In every house you will find
a dedicated mother who unfortunately couldn’t receive enough English education to
teach or even converse with her English medium studying children. Here starts
emotional as well as pitiful story of almost 60% urban mothers! Sometimes children failed to understand that
medium of thoughts are of lesser value than thoughts themselves. English is very
useful language there is no doubt about that but if someone expresses thoughts
in other language than they are of the same value as thoughts expressed in English.
There are number of people who never wrote in English but are now highly
acclaimed and widely read among English speaking people like Leo Tolstoy,
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Anton Chekhov, Premchand, Khalil Gibran, Paulo Coelho etc.
They expressed their thoughts in their native tongues; it doesn’t depreciate the
value their thoughts possess. Children should
try to look for a brighter side of their parents, they couldn’t speak English but
you can speak so fluent English just because they gifted it to you!!
Gauri Shinde
supported by her writer-director –producer husband R. Balki ( known for Cheeni
Kum and Paa) expressed this middle age dilemma rather beautifully. Sridevi was
awesome in his comeback performance. She looks as natural in doing Michal Jackson
move “ ooohhhhh” as she was in “hawa hawai…” but far more graceful and mature. Movie was
good written and well performed. But what impressed me the most was the last
scene of movie. As I said earlier the movie is all about getting her derailed
life back on track. Shashi joined English classes more to prove herself than to
learn English as a language, that’s why she learns with all her heart in it.
For all other members in the class learning English is either for carrier boost
or for fun, but for Shashi it was for getting back her lost respect back in the
eyes of her children and her husband. Movie has good emotional and humorous narrating
but the last scene expressed that the director must have felt Shahsi somewhere
nearby in her family! When shashi finished learning and passed with flying
colors with impressive speech at marriage ceremony, it accomplished her task. In
the last scene of the movie while going back to India, in the plane air hostess
asked her if she wanted any newspaper, first she answered New york Times out of
impulse, but then thinking of something she asked if she could get any Hindi newspaper!
This shows that she did not want to prove her scholarship to her family all she
cared about was little respect and after her speech her husband and daughter
realized their mistakes so, she went back her normal way even before leaving
USA.
A good piece of
work from debutant director Gauri Shinde, a family movie, should be watched by every teenager
along with his/her mom. Never forget whatever you are today it is what your
parents carved out of a piece of flesh and blood you were when you born. Never
hurt them, they are all you got who can make you understand the meaning of true
love and care without may be even having ability of speaking these words in
English!!
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