Analyzing Akele Hum Akele Tum: Through The Lens of a Custody Battle
By Sanyukta Biswas
The introduction of the article traces the change in viewership base of TV over the years. It focuses on how housewives have become the primary target group and how violence perpetrated by women as well as against them on screen in perceived. Against this backdrop, the custody battle in the movie Akele Hum Akele Tum has been reviewed.
Back in the 1980s, during the good-old-Doordarshan days, TV brought families together. Laptops, smartphones and digital satellite televisions which allow each member of the family the luxury of enjoying a program of their own choice, was not only unheard of but also unimaginable, back in the day. If truth be told, people hardly had a choice but from what I could gather from conversations about the bygone era between elders over a warm cup of chai is that they were absolutely delighted with these shows.
The shows managed to cut across the barriers of age, gender and class and kept viewers spellbound, which is no small feat by any means. The advent of cable TV in the early 1990s changed the viewer base for daily soaps, with specific channels dedicated to sports, news, education, religious sermons, and animation appealing to the interests of the children, men and elderly of the family. Earlier, one had to wait for a Sunday to watch a movie broadcasted by Doordarshan and suddenly there were various channels that ran movies throughout the day.
In order to cope up with the challenge posed to daily soaps by these content-specific channels, the producers began aiming at women across the country as the primary viewer base. It seems that producers believed that there is little demand for anything other than the melodramatic daily soaps.
As a result over the years television lost the heterogeneity it once had in terms of genre. Content-driven comedy, horror, thriller, short stories became a thing of the past. Unbelievably huge joint families with bickering inmates, having a one-dimensional personality became the norm. The fact that people from across the diverse spectrum cannot relate to these daily soaps can be gauged from the fact that there is hardly any recognition given to the issues such as those faced by hosteller, a live-in couple, nuclear family, working mothers, elderly couples living alone, so on and so forth, on screen.
One glance through the various channels would lead to the conclusion that the targeted viewer base seems to be housewives as disproportionately, a large number of women portrayed on screen are either housewives or have jobs typically known as pink-collar jobs. For instance, romance brewing between a successful businessman and his secretary is an all too common plot followed by the female lead quitting work after marriage.
Considering the targeted viewer base, it becomes even more important to stop normalizing legal wrong perpetrated against women or perpetrated by women themselves on others. Voices have been raised and rightly so against the normalization of domestic violence against women by the media. The issue pertaining to the depiction of domestic violence in daily soaps has begun receiving attention from writers across the globe. However, manipulation of domestic violence laws by women on screen is an area which has received surprisingly little attention in the country as of now.
We can’t lose sight of the fact that the state of domestic violence laws in the country is such that on one hand, they have failed to protect women sufficiently and on the other hand have enough loopholes to harass men. Our commitment towards eradicating gender-based violence shouldn’t be biased enough to be insensitive towards the suffering of parties other than the wife. In the Indian scenario husband, wife, children and even the in-laws are the affected parties in a marital dispute. In light of the stress undergone by a child during custody proceedings, this article shall be focusing on the portrayal of treatment meted to the child by either parent during custody proceeding on screen.
Weekly television series have long given way to daily soaps that air from Monday to Friday during primetime. Such long-running time comes up with its own set of challenges, especially in terms of content. One of the most commonly used ploys to further the plot is a time leap which could vary from a few months to a few decades. A slow-paced love story coming to a sudden halt due to a series of misunderstandings followed by a time leap has become a trend. The time leap almost always brings children of the estranged couple playing the main lead into the picture. The child is usually in the custody of the female protagonist smarting from the hurt caused by the male protagonist, in no mood to even let the latter know about the child‘s existence let alone encourage bonding between the two.
Growing up in an Indian household, getting exposed to at least a few of these daily soaps is inevitable. However, what is disturbing is the fact that I never flinched at a woman telling her husband that she will never let him meet their child the way I flinched at a man being openly abusive towards his wife. This goes on to show the extent to which television has normalized the malicious mother syndrome. The dangers posed by this phenomenon are way too real especially in light of how dirty custody battles get in the lower courts of the country.
Against this backdrop, the author seeks to highlight the delicate manner in which divorce has been handled in the Hindi adaptation of Kramer v Kramer titled Akele Hum Akele Tum (AHAT) released in 1995. I was very keen on watching Kramer v Kramer but couldn’t find the complete movie anywhere on the internet and decided to go with the next best option.
‘Akele Hum Akele Tum’ walks the tightrope between an art-house cinema and a commercial potboiler with poise. It has been suitably adapted to Indian taste, complete with the usual playback songs and dance sequences, without losing the essence of the original movie. The movie has both its heart and head in the right place. In fact, to the credit of the director and screenplay, the story has been retold in such a way that the audience gets to witness the gradual development of the main lead’s relationship.
A shared passion for music and making it big in the field of playback singing brings them together. This, in turn, ensures that the sympathy of the viewer lies with both the parties when the marriage crumbles apart, leaving both the parties grappling in the dark before eventually opting for the legal way out. In the first thirty minutes, the gradual alienation of female protagonist, as a result of the denial of career opportunities and being stuck in a domestic rut is portrayed sensitively. She eventually has an emotional breakdown which leads her to abandon her matrimonial home.
A shout out to the creators of this lovely movie, for not vilifying a woman for wanting to have a career of her own, especially in a mainstream movie of the 90s. That’s because the 90s was a time period, infamously known to glorify self-sacrificing mothers as well as the wives who worshipped their husbands and went to any extent to keep their marriages intact. Sexually active women were always the vamp, not to forget the cringe-worthy humour at the expense of women and the crass objectification of women.
In a remarkable move, the female protagonist leaves behind a letter for her son explaining delicately why she had to leave without apportioning any blame on her husband. A few minutes later, the male lead assures his son that his mother had no issues with him. The underlying reason for her departure was rather marital discord. The last hour of the movie traces the legal proceeding in family court regarding the custody of the son. As both the husband and wife are eager for the custody of the son, they fight the legal battle fairly out of mutual respect. She firmly states that he did not indulge in domestic violence against her during the cross-examination and he refuses to falsely allege that she is an alcoholic and had an extra-marital affair. These scenes stand out for me. They become even more relevant in the light of the rising number of divorces in the country, especially those which are contested in a foul manner. A long term romantic relationship coming to an end is hard enough to cope up without mud being flung at the couple. Add the humiliation of intimate details becoming public for all to see along with the cost of litigation, and you have got the perfect recipe for a life-altering change.
India as a society is yet to give breaking up cordially, the due importance that it deserves. Even a blatantly erring spouse needs to be forgiven, in order to be at peace with oneself. Moving on in the journey of life becomes harder when you are being weighed down by emotional baggage of past relationships. If I am not wrong we have enough matters to worry about on any given day, without being troubled further by these demons or should I say dementors of the past. How strenuous can it be to not succumb to the temptation of false allegations of domestic violence and extra-marital affair to get hold of the custody of the children? Weren’t they made and raised by the couples together? I am all for addressing grievances at the court, based on facts. Challenging the co- parent’s parenting style and claiming that you would be a better parent due to varying factors is completely acceptable too. What is not acceptable is lying in court.
It should not be that difficult to have some iota of respect towards someone you once shared a home and life with after all. Therefore, I staunchly believe that a short film made out of key scenes from this movie would do much good to couples at loggerheads with one another. We have got such a robust mechanism in place to protect the so-called sacrament of marriage, consisting of family counsellors, mediators, judicial officers, legal services cells etc. . I am sure one of these bodies could figure out the logistics of mandatory screening of this short film for couples approached by them.
Sanyukta Biswas , B.Sc.L.L.B (GNLU), L.L.M in Access to Justice (TISS).
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