MAYA (Dir. Vikas Chandra, 2018, India)

Maya, a tightly scripted short film directed by the talented Vikas Chandra, opens with the face of a child. The palpable image of the child establishes a mark of innocence and youth, positing the broader themes of growing old, death and companionship. Maya, played by Kirti Kulhari, is a modern-day middle class woman who cares for her mother (Alka Amin in fine form). Having met Raunak (Naveen Kasturia) through a matrimonial site, Maya invites Raunak’s parents to her house where they both express their wish to be married. Chandra’s sensitive handling of this dinner table sequence is measured through the ways in which the mother-daughter relationship is the focal point. Exploring Maya’s refusal to negotiate where her mother belongs, pronounces the supposed norms of modern day relationships while effectively arguing for the creation of a new familial and matrimonial space that defies traditions. But when Maya announces that her mother will remain with her after their marriage Raunak’s parents are somewhat bemused by this decision, and so is Raunak, arguably demarcating her proto-feminist ideals. The sequence discloses another taboo, that of bodily degeneration that comes with growing old. Indeed, Raunak’s parents show no sympathy whatsoever for the mum’s incontinence and apathetically walk away from the dinner table when she can’t control her bladder, a gesture that conveys a coldness indicative of lofty and fixed conservative middle class apprehensions. The mother also feels she is a burden on her daughter, another social anxiety director Vikas Chandra explores with a degree of complexity, notably through Maya’s spasms of impatience. The crux of this two hander is when the mother goes missing which triggers a frantic search that finds Maya canvassing the city with the reluctant help of Raunak. A great sense of loss washes over Maya in this particular instance and her eventual reunion with her mother, staged perfectly on a stairway, returns to a perennial theme of our times – how to respond to both old age and death with dignity and empathy in a society that has shrunken into an extended malady of individualism.