Review of Konkani Film "Tarpaṇa": The Importance of Valuing Family Members before it is Too Late

 

Review of Konkani Film "Tarpaṇa": The Importance of Valuing Family Members before it is Too Late

 Shrikant G. Talageri

 

A few days ago (June 16th) was apparently "(International) Fathers' Day". It was also the day that a Konkani film, in the Konkani of coastal Karnataka, was shown to a house-full audience of Konkani speakers at the second-floor screen at Nakshatra Mall in Dadar (Mumbai), which dealt with the theme of father-son relations. The name of the film was Tarpaṇa; a word which I confess was new to me, but after seeing the film and then checking up on google I find that it means "that offering  which satisfies (the departed soul)".

The two other earlier Konkani films which in my opinion were really great were the 2017 film "Juze" and, long before it, the 1969 film "Mojem Gorcan". Both were in the dialects of Goa, but both were completely different from each other: Juze was a superbly-made (what at one time would have been called an) "art film", and won well-deserved international awards. The older film "Mojem Gorcan" was a hilarious comedy (though the story-line was of course a time-worn one with different versions in Hindi and Marathi, and probably other regional languages as well, down the years) which was shown long ago on Doordarshan (in the good old black-and-white and pre-cable-TV days): strangely there seems to be no copy of this old film (I believe just the fifth Konkani film to ever be made) available anywhere, and few people even in the world of Goan (and specifically Goan Christian) Konkani film world seem to even have heard of it! The film Tarpaṇa, which is the subject of my article, is not just in a different dialect and represents a different area and culture, but is again, in its theme and story, completely different from the other two.

[I must also refer here to a superb Marathi film directed by Bipin Nadkarni, a CSB film director: the film Uttarāyaṇa, released in 2004, twenty years ago. This film I count among the absolutely best Marathi films I have ever seen. the director is the son of a very eminent Konkani drama writer, V.P. Nadkarni. Sadly, no-one before the present film (Tarpaṇa)  seems to have seen fit to make a full-fledged film in the GSB or CSB Konkani dialects of coastal Karnataka!]   

 

To begin with, what is specially endearing about this new film Tarpaṇa is that it is probably the first proper full-fledged film to be made in a dialect of coastal Karnataka, and specifically in the prominent GSB dialect of what we still refer to as "South Kanara". I am a Chitrapur Saraswat, and have written much-read articles before on the Chitrapur Saraswat (CSB) community as well as language. But, to a Chitrapur Saraswat, the GSB dialects and culture of coastal Karnataka are as dear to the heart as our own CSB dialects, and I have repeatedly pointed this out in my earlier articles on the CSB community and language. And this became clear from the ecstatic and super-enthusiastic responses of the (mainly CSB) audience in the packed hall at Dadar (Mumbai) on 16/6/2024.

The film has four main characters: a father, mother, son and daughter-in-law. Interestingly, the actors who played the parents are both CSBs (Sanjay Savkur and Meera Naimpally) and the son and daughter-in-law (Anuj Nayak and Madhura Shenoy) are GSBs. All of them of course speak in the most delightful and idiomatic SK-GSB dialect. A most perfect union of the Konkani speakers of Karnataka. About the actors, I must specially mention that the father (Sanjay Savkur) stayed in South Mumbai in the centre of Mumbai CSB activities, in Talmakiwadi, before he emigrated to the USA several decades ago (and now stays in Chicago, I believe). He was also a school classmate of my own younger brother (also Sanjay) and a good friend of my brother-in-law, and his mother was a good friend of my own mother. Needless to say, he was a familiar figure (to CSBs staying in South Mumbai, though from a period of time some decades ago).

To me, a special surprise was the son (Anuj Nayak). According to me, Crime Patrol (on Sony TV) is probably the greatest serial ever made − and the serial was also a subject of an article by me in 2022 when it was banned for a period of time due to a controversial depiction of a crime event − and Anuj Nayak plays the character of an Inspector in a very large number of parts (perhaps more than 500 parts) of the serial, which seems to have ended in 2023. I have a massive number of parts of the serial (more than 2700), and I watch at least 2 parts of it almost five days a week along with a friend who is also a great fan of it. The inspector played by Anuj Nayak was always one of my favorite inspectors in the serial, and I had often wondered which part of India the actor belonged to without being able to arrive at any conclusion (many of the other inspectors are known from other Marathi or Hindi serials). When I first received the intimation of the film show in Dadar on 16-6-2024, I was thrilled to know he was a Konkani-speaker.

Apart from, and even without any connection to, all these above personal and "communal" predilections on my part, the film Tarpaṇa was a masterpiece and a ground-breaking film in many other ways:

1. All the main persons associated with the making of the film, including the super-talented writer-director Devdas Nayak and the actors (every single one of whom left nothing wanting in their performance) were first-timers, and they were geographically located in different parts of the globe, but managed to get together and complete this film to perfection in just 15 days.

2. The film presents the ambience and atmosphere of a South Kanara village (I believe in or around Mulky near Mangalore) to perfection: the family atmosphere, the gossipy village atmosphere in temples and hotels, cultural glimpses (Yakshagana, temple bhajans, village childrens' competitions, etc.), and many other things which transport us right into the heart of rural South Kanara (of which I only knew from the reminiscences of my mother who spent her childhood till almost the age of twenty in Mangalore).

3. But above all things was the theme of the film. It was not a romance, a crime thriller, a comedy film, a political film, a religious film, or even a family drama in the usual sense of the term. The main theme was the relationship between a father and a son, and the main moral (if I may call it that) or social message it gave, in a number of different ways, was that life is too short to spend in personal ego-problems when it comes to relations between parents and children − in the particular case of this film, of course, it was between a father and son since (as the film specifically pointed out) the importance of a mother's love is the theme of countless stories, but the importance of a father's love (for so many obvious reasons) is not so very universally appreciated. In this film, the estranged father (in the home village) and son (settled in Bangalore) have not been on speaking terms for a number of years due to an altercation and misunderstanding which neither of them (and particularly the son) tried to amend out of egotism. and just when they have decided to patch up, it is too late! As the film makes very, very clear, nothing in the world is more important than one's parents, and a life (or a part of life) spent in ignoring this truth can lead to irreversible tragedy. I find this film unique in the fact that the entire film (like no other film before) seems to have been made with one and only one purpose: to hammer in this truth. As the film tells us (and indeed as the son himself tells a friend in a hotel conversation in the film), the son in this film has made a fatal mistake in his relations with his father and it is too late for him to make amends; but those people who do have parents living should learn from this and not make similar mistakes, and should give all the possible time, love and respect to their parents when they are still alive and not live to regret not having done so until it is too late.

This is a very personal message to all individuals: not a message about "larger" issues involving things like "nation", "religion", "ideology", "the future of mankind",  etc., but a plain and simple message about basic family relationships which are really much more important than these "larger" issues. For this I sincerely salute the writer-director of this film, Devdas Nayak, from the bottom of my heart.   

[I wrote earlier about the serial Crime Patrol. In so many parts of this serial one sees countless cases of what can only be described as monster parents: parents who neglect, ill-treat, abandon or even torture their children; fathers who regularly molest their own daughters and mothers who turn a blind eye to it; parents who sell off their own children into slavery and prostitution, etc. There is no doubt there are such monster parents in this world, just as there are (in even greater numbers) monster children. But monster parents are neither really the nature nor the norm. This film is about normal families, and is naturally meant to be seen and understood, and its lessons imbibed, by normal people living in normal families, and not by children having monster parents].

In my opinion, there may or may not be Gods, but the two Real Gods (or I should say, the Real God and Real Goddess) in everyone's life are their parents (and by extension grandparents).

I lost my father in 2002 and my mother in 2012. They have left an unfillable void in my life which remains to this day. Their last few years were spent in illnesses and physical suffering. We (I and my brother and sister) did everything we could for them, and indeed most of our acquaintances and relatives can bear testimony to this. Or so I generally think. But then countless "small" things bring to my mind countless "small" incidents and occasions when unthinkingly (or selfishly) I may have been so engrossed in my own personal problems or activities that I did not pay enough attention to their (expressed or unexpressed) needs or wishes, or did (or said) what I shouldn't have or failed to do (or say) what I should have. These countless "small" things in retrospect, do not seem so "small". They seem enormous. Which is why while the persons whom I loathe most are those who ill-treat (or ill-treated) their parents; the persons whom I consider truly great (whatever my other personal or ideological differences with them) are those who truly have nothing to regret in their relationships with their parents. I personally fall in neither of these two categories.

All these thoughts came (not for the first time) flooding into my mind while I watched this film. And the truth is there was not a single dry eye in the theatre after the conclusion of the film. But will people learn the lessons taught by this film? I can only hope so, even if that hope comes with a heavy fistful of salt.

In my opinion, this film deserves every award that it can get, and should also be dubbed and/or subtitled in as many languages as possible. On a lesser (but more immediately relevant) note, every Konkani speaker should definitely make it a point to see this film. And, as many of the speakers who spoke after the screening of the film pointed out, hopefully this film will inspire many more people to make films in Konkani and (I must chauvinistically add) especially in our GSB and CSB Konkani dialects of coastal Karnataka.