Kramer vs. Kramer

It’s been a hectic couple of weeks, with me working on weekends also. Add to that the rains, the gym and the general messed up way of things. So on Friday night I watched Barfi and then promptly fell sick, bed-ridden for the entire weekend, having recurrent nightmares about the deliverable on Monday. If you thought being alone in Mumbai sucks, try being alone and sick in Mumbai. It’s more depressing than watching Rohit Sharma bat, but it lasts longer.

I did try to cheer myself up by reading The Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif, a satirical take on Pakistan’s political situation at the backdrop of General Zia’s mysterious death. But even that didn’t work as I kept tossing and turning, red-nosed, eyes permanently swollen, unable to fall asleep. Now I pride myself on being a very strong GIRL, who exhibits none of the GURLY characteristics (i.e. annoying girly behaviour), but in sickness and in poverty (yes, since my dad takes away more than half my salary to invest in all sorts of complicated structured products), I become one of those irritating species. So I did the things which make me feel better: random mean texting, planning my Manila trip early next year with anon and SH, planning our family trip to Pataya with my kid brother and convincing my dad to allow me to buy a smartphone since he maintains a strict control over my finances, which would otherwise disappear in more of clothes, shoes and trips.

Anyway, coming back to Barfi, I consider a movie to be good if it manages to make me laugh/cry. This one made me do both, at times together. While I found the love story between Shruti and Barfi a little unconvincing, the back-and-forth narrative a bit unnecessary and the length a tad too long, overall it was a refreshingly different movie with strong performances, which, as a certain critic put it, “despite being a love triangle, focused more on the love and less on the triangle.”

The usual sensible GIRL in me refuses to think and the emotional, vulnerable GURL in me is incapable of it…