Amitabh Bachchan, Rashmika's ‘Goodbye’ is a guide on Hindu sanskar

In the face of the sudden death of a loved one, a parent or a spouse, people, numbed by sorrow, often question the meaning of existence. They mull over death and suffering being unalterable truths of life. Yet, desperate for some sign of the dead person still on this earth (even as a spirit), they wonder about the journey of the soul after death. Will the elaborate religious rituals and traditions help the dead to achieve salvation?

There’s also another thought that festers — that they never gave the dead enough of their time when they were alive. How they can never reach out to them for one last time to share something. That stings for a long time.

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Goodbye, the new Hindi film featuring Amitabh Bachchan and Rashmika Mandanna, takes you into this philosophical and religious zone. The backdrop of the film set in Chandigarh, happens to be the funeral rituals of Gayatri (Neena Gupta), the wife of a grieving Harish (Amitabh Bachchan). 

On death and rituals

There’s no real drama happening here except when the news has to be broken to the four children about their mother’s death because of a heart attack. And, they have to weave their way home from Mumbai, or the US or wherever they are, to attend their mother’s funeral.

There is some father-daughter friction that plays out between Harish and Tara (Rashmika Mandanna) but that too strangely dissolves after the interval with no explanation. There are memories of the playful Gayatri who loved to drink and smoke, and the binding force of the family. But, the film spends more time on the funeral, detailing why a dead person has cotton stuffed up their noses and whether the body should be kept facing north.

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No one has an answer when Tara asks why a daughter cannot light the funeral pyre as well. But that’s just a random question probably slid in to appease women viewers. After all, director Vikas Bahl was accused of sexually harassing a woman on the sets of his acclaimed Kangana Ranaut starrer, Queen.

Fixed agenda

Goodbye is more keen to enlighten the audience on the meaning behind ‘Hindu’ rituals. Tara, who is a non-believer, has to be brought around to understand why the ashes of a dead person are immersed in the Ganga. And, we get to hear the story of King Shantanu of Hastinapur and his beautiful wife, who killed her newborns by drowning them in the Ganga, through an Amar Chitra Katha comic book kind of visual storytelling.

There’s also an argument over the necessity of the eldest son shaving his head off since he has an important boardroom meeting in his office. The children do not want to make sacrifices for the dead because they are not convinced it will really help in their salvation. Eventually, the eldest son (Pavail Gulati) ends up shaving his head to keep his father happy.

Unlike the brilliant Hindi film Ramprasad ke Tehvri, on the shifting dynamics between family members after the father’s death, Goodbye does not go into the lives of the children – we know Tara is a lawyer and won her first case and has a boyfriend Mudassar who lives with her, which is a bone of contention with her father. 

The other sons have jobs but they are in the film to push the message that the younger generation should fall in line with the sanskars of an Indian family.

In short, Goodbye is really a montage of scenes on Hindu traditions — a moral lesson on Hindu customs. There’s a song too on life and death being part of a person’s life, set against the magnificent, customary evening aarti on the steps of the Ganga ghat in Haridwar. The song Jaikal mahakaal, sung by Amit Trivedi and Suhas Sawant, is very similar to the Om deva deva namaha number in Brahmastra.

What’s with the Hindu imagery?

Cannot help asking if this heavy dose of Hindu religious imagery in Hindi films is a way out for Bollywood to appease the saffron brigade.

The non-religious gem in the film finally comes from Bachchan’s character, when he explains to his children what he believes happens to the dead. It’s a beautiful, JK Krishnamurthy kind of philosophy, which stays with you long after the film is over.

Undeniably, Bachchan pulls this film up many, many notches higher. In some of the scenes, as the sorrowful husband, grief palpably sitting on his shoulders, he is a complete natural. 

Rashmika Mandanna, who makes her Bollywood debut, holds her own with the legend. Bahl tries a Piku with Rashmika and Bachchan but he could not pull it off because he has not enough grist to carry that track through.

In the Emmy award winning OTT biting satire White Lotus, a beauty spa worker tries to calm her wealthy, anxious guest (played brilliantly by Jennifer Coolidge), by singing the Gayatri Mantra to her. It seems incongruous for a Hawaiian woman (with a horrible accent) to be singing this mantra to a rich spoilt American in a resort setting, but isn’t it amazing that it even found its way there? 

Obviously, Indian filmmakers too think it is cool (and necessary) to turn to Hindu culture for material for their movies.