Atrangi Re the new Hindi film starring Dhanush (Vishu), Askhay Kumar (Sajjad), and Sara Ali Khan (Rinku) hit screens on Christmas eve and here is what Hannah Priya has to say about it. In case you have not watched it and you mean to, consider this a SPOILER ALERT.
You’ve been warned!
The Plot
With the trailer release, many were put off by the huge age gap between Akshay Kumar and Sara Khan, who were depicted as lovers. However, the director of the movie, Anand L. Rai requested the critics to be patient and wait for the movie release to understand the concept. And what is that concept? Sajjad who is a picture-perfect depiction of a partner is pretty much all that he is – a depiction. He lives in Rinku’s mind. She constantly relives her romance with Sajjad in her head and pushes away the love of the real man in her life, Vishu, who is more than willing to love her. Digging deeper into her psyche, the story unravels the mystery behind Sajjad’s depiction in Sarah’s mind. Rinku is an orphan. Her parents had an inter-religious marriage and both her parents fell prey to the schemes of the people opposing their union and got killed. Sajjad is actually Rinku’s father.
While many complained of incest and feelings of ickiness towards the concept of Rinku imagining Sajjad to be her love interest, it is a revelation to those with difficult childhoods on how the director has uncomplicated the complexity of the father-daughter relationship. The key point to note is how Rinku doesn’t imagine her mother in any sort of coming-back-to-save-her role. This is because in the natural realm of things, children tend to always look to the father for protection and unmatchable love in the face of danger. So, for a woman, her understanding of love and protection comes from the experiences she has with the first man in her life – her father.
For Rinku, it is a constant battle between her fantasized idea of love in the form of Sajjad and what love in real life feels like from a man. Whenever Rinku is around Vishu, Sajjad challenges Rinku to check if Vishu can match her imaginary expectation of love. On the flip side, Vishu challenges Rinku to check if her imaginary Sajjad can help her in a real-life difficult circumstance.
The Takeaway
Both these scenarios show how deeply run the scars of a childhood. In every daughter, there is a need for her father to love and protect her. When the relationship of a good father is missing, the child tends to imagine unrealistic levels of love from a male figure and tends to demand this from her partner. At one juncture, Rinku admits that she likes Vishu but cannot live without Sajjad, at which point Vishu draws the line. He demands that she picks either her imagination, which is a fairy-tale filled with magical unrealistic expectations or the reality of trusting a simple, real man to love her with realistic expectations. The difficulty of every child with a traumatic childhood is this very essence of the movie – What do we do with our childhood insecurity? Do we project it onto our present and sabotage our own happiness or take the brave step of letting go of our childhood scars and choose to trust and believe?
A popular saying is that we are responsible for our own happiness. This is a scary ideology for those carrying emotional scars from childhood as they are constantly looking for someone to love them all the way back to their childhood and heal those scars. But this is not just impossible, but unfair on anyone burdened with the responsibility of healing another person’s inner child. At the end of the day, a partner can be just that, a partner. He or she cannot give you the lost love from your childhood. So, what hope do children with difficult childhoods have?
The first step is realization. For many daughters with unmet fatherly love and protection, their subconscious mind forces them to project those expectations onto their partner and the society at large. Once Rinku realizes that Sajjad is her projection of the fatherly protection and love that she misses, it was easier for her to let go. Realizing that our insecurities are sourced from unaddressed scars of childhood help us to take a call on what to do with them. Do we let them dictate our reality or choose to let go?
The second step is letting go. As harsh as it sounds, we can never go back in time and get the love we yearn as a child from a person who does not exist anymore. Once we let go of these yearnings, we stop seeing ourselves as incomplete. You are no longer projecting unmet needs on others. You stop taking things personally and start taking account of your actions. Like Rinku, you finally accept reality for what it is rather than twisting it to be what it is not. Your partner is not your father-figure; it is okay to trust people; you do not expect magical experiences but rather the realistic joys of life.
The last and the most important point is to be grateful. Be grateful for the people God brings into your life. These are not people who will compensate for the lost love or fill the shoes of a parent. But God definitely has a set of people whom He has specifically destined to walk with you in your journey. God knows it is not easy to carry these scars. The Bible says, “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”
Full Circle
If you think Jesus does not know what a difficult childhood is, think about His birth. He was born miraculously to a virgin woman. Meaning, the people of the little town of Bethlehem did not know who Jesus’s father was. Can you imagine what they would have spoken about Jesus’s mother, Mary? We celebrate Christmas for the birth of Jesus but we would be more in tears than in merriment when we realize how well beneath His glory Jesus choose to be in just so He could show how much He understands our pain in every aspect of our lives. So, trust God and let go of your insecurity. Your childhood scars belong in the past. Take that leap of faith, trust the people God brings into your life, and dare to love without any insecurity.
Our Daily Masala 