is love enough, Sir?

When we think of love, we think of it in terms of an allegory of everything romantic. And whenever we talk of romance, we don’t invite reason, judgment and pragmatism because clearly there’s nothing practical about buying a five-hundred-rupee bouquet that won’t last for more than five days. But something was both reasonable and romantic when Ashwin bought a sewing machine for his maid, Ratna. The film depicts love in speed, and not a slow-motion montage of lovers separated from the world. Ratna and Ashwin were, in fact, trying to live in the world that kept coming between them. 

Their lives didn’t run parallel, where one’s ended other’s began. Ratna comes from a distant village in Maharashtra. She works as a househelp for Ashwin, who works as an architect. They had different names for each other. To Ratna he is sir, and to him, she is Ratna. The life and name that they shared were different, but they suffered alike. The 99 minutes of runtime gradually show instances where both of them fulfil the need to be understood. Ratna reminds Sir that life doesn’t end when someone gets widowed, like her, or when someone’s marriage gets called off, like his. She is, in turn, supported by Ashwin, who allows her to join a tailoring course, taking some time off from being a maid. They don’t buy each other flowers, but Ratna stitches him a shirt, and he gets her a book on fashion. It is in the brief moments where they get to see a part of each other that they do move beyond reason. Entering Ratna’s room in the servant quarter, gazing at her belongings or watching her dance is a symbol of how the boundaries between them get blurred. 

As is evident nothing special brings them to fall in love; it is the spoken words of support that make Ashwin like Ratna, who is unsure of what the world may perceive of a love to exist between people of two different classes. In that sense, the movie depicts the dichotomy of thoughts. Ratna was a realist who found that Ashwin’s world would never see her as the half that could complete him. But since Ashwin was well-to-do, he could afford to see her as his better half. The last twenty minutes of the movie show how reason is what works in the real world. Ratna leaves the job as a maid, and Ashwin decides to move back to New York. However, as a last goodbye, he helps her by unanimously getting her to work with a designer. It is when Ratna feels more than half, that she dials a contact saved as Sir, and addresses the receiver as Ashwin. The ending is suggestive that perhaps reason could fall short in front of love.

The film is not the Mona Lisa that would have a crowd. It is instead a private art collection of a long-lost maker; only those without having anything to expect shall find it worth watching. The movie is special not for romance but for making romance feel relatable to you because it is tied to the real world. It does not make you crave love; it makes you question it and opens up myriad dimensions of everything and everyone that could be love and in love, respectively. Ratna never had to be a half who would complete Ashwin; she just had to realise that she was whole, worthy of being loved, even if the lover came from a world different from hers. 

 

aditi

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