Rohan Parashuram Kanawade’s Sabar Bonda Is An Astounding, Assured Debut

FAIRLY EARLY IN ROHAN PARASHURAM KANAWADE's Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears), a character is instructed on how to grieve. Don’t cut your hair, don’t ask for a second helping and walk bare feet for the next couple of days. Anand (Bhushaan Manoj) has just lost his father but his extended relatives have no time for feelings. The mourning ought to be communal and hence regimented, an ask which falls in line with their larger curiosity in Anand’s life: at 30 years of age, why is he still unmarried?

The demand to conform and the desire to live form the crux of Kanawade’s Sabar Bonda, a strikingly assured debut and the first Marathi film to be premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. After Anand’s father passes away, his mother persuades him to go to his ancestral village for the stipulated 10-day mourning period. He resists suggesting that he will go to pick her up instead. A quiet telling-off changes his mind as they both journey back to a place which has more memories than people.

Sabar Bonda opens as a quiet portrait of grief — the first scene takes place at a hospital, loud muffled cries score more than one scene— and the inclination only hardens as the premise starts taking shape. Anand’s reluctance to go back to his village has more reasons than his dislike for them. He is queer and their constant queries about his marriage make conversations awkward. But there is Balya (Suraaj Suman), his childhood friend. Their history is never spelt out except that it is shared, much like the comfort they have in each other’s company. We see them meeting in silence and it is difficult to not assume the tragic segue waiting to happen. The impending sense of gloom only intensifies when in one scene both men listen to a song from Sairat, the 2016 Marathi outing on an intercaste love story that culminated as a tragedy.

The odds against Anand and Balya’s story are stacked to the brim. Neither of them is spared. Balya too is subjected to unending questions about his marriage. A girl from his sister’s village has agreed to marry him but Balya, a farmer, is avoiding her. His constant refusal results in an ugly fight with his father. We don’t see it well but bitter words could be heard. Kanawade’s gaze remains mostly detached, the style reminiscent of Achal Mishra.

He chooses close-ups only when depicting Anand and Balya. Moments of their togetherness are designed as long shots as the camera languidly grazes on their faces, underscoring the intimacy which mostly translates as silences. They do not talk much but the love gets conveyed through other things. Like Balya checking with Anand’s mother every morning if the latter is up or getting him a sabar bonda which is eaten with a flushed face.

The merit of Kanawade’s directorial feature is that it never disturbs this tranquillity. If anything, it preserves it. Despite what the setting might imply, Sabar Bonda unfolds as an affecting tale about reconnecting and companionship and not a tragedy that most queer stories end up being. Anand’s parents pose no opposition to his sexuality. It might not seem much but Kanawade archives much with this shift, the most being lending an empathy to Indian parents that is not often accorded to them.

Anand shares that since his father had not studied much, he was hesitant to come out to him. But in the very next moment, through recollections, we get a sense of the extent of his father’s acceptance and the deep fear that his son might end up alone. Anand’s mother (an excellent Jayshri Jagtap) stands up for her son when the relatives corner him about marriage. She soothes his head and hushes that Balya asks for him often. These choices make Sabar Bonda what it is – an astoundingly original work rooted in the lived nature of relationships rather than the idea, or apprehension of them. In effect, Anand has come out only to his parents.

Kanawade deploys a similar swap (of perceived expectations) in the way he crafts the male characters. Both of them know who they are yet it is Balya, the one living in the village, who turns out to be the initiator to the city-bred Anand. He holds him and asks to be held. He runs his hand in Anand’s hair, evoking a tenderness that is hard not to be moved by. Both actors are terrific in their turn, using their body and silences to pursue familiarity. Bhushaan Manoj’s face is suffused with a gentility that leaks into his posture and gaze. Ditto for Suraaj Suman who comes into his own during the runtime and leaves behind a deep imprint.

Much like its lead characters, Sabar Bonda is a film that is many things at once. It is a story about companionship and a story about loss. Much like how for both Anand and Balya their sexuality is a part of their identity and not their whole self. A sense of grief pervades through every frame of the narrative, deftly weaved through the tenderness that unravels at the forefront. It comes together with aching clarity at the end when Anand weeps for his father. Here too truism is bartered for thoughtful ingenuity.

He cries not because he was misunderstood by his father but because he was understood by him, and now the person was gone. Anand cries because he lost the man he loved and who loved him back. This distils the intent of Sabar Bonda that it is love and not lovelessness, which is the most definitive proof of love.