Tu Hai Mera Sunday: Of Hope, Sunday Mornings and Coffee Beans

“It’s Okay, It’s Life”-Tasneem, Tu Hai Mera Sunday

Milind Dhaimade’s “Tu Hai Mera Sunday” is one of the most endearing films I have seen recently, a film that makes you realize the charm oozing out of a Sunday morning holds a very precious value in life and should be duly acknowledged. The film is about a group of friends looking to find a suitable and spacious place in Mumbai to play a game of football, a game so important in all of their lives that they are willing to even travel to a neighboring state so that they can have a decent game. The film takes the game of football and Sunday as two symbiotic metaphors and narrates us the tale of optimism filled with romance and happiness. There are talks of escapism, realization of being content and happy in our lives, importance of space (both physical and emotional) and an amusing quest of being a nice person.

What makes Sunday such a special day in a week? A brief stress buster compared to the busy schedule in our lives, a day which allows us a moment of isolation against the world, a period of procrastination where we aimlessly lie down in the bed and ponder about all the activities in our lives. I do not have an answer to that exactly, but after watching the film I did realized why Sunday marked a special event for Arjun, Jayesh Bhai, Mehernosh, Dominic and Rashid, the five-principle protagonist of the film. It allowed them to escape from their mundane schedule of life, and without worrying about any circumstance, they enjoyed a breathless game of football. A simple period of leisure on a bright sunny Sunday morning through a game of football is what all them simply desired. What chain of events happened in each one of their lives throughout the week after an eventful Sunday’s game formed the rest of the film. 

There are underlying strings of hopeful moments weaved all over the film, a girl is divorced because she gives birth to deaf kids, and with a shining smile tells the other person to not feel sorry, it’s alright because it’s life. It is delivered with utmost innocence, and for me becomes the soul of the story. This theme of this various unaltered moments of hope staged throughout the film is because of the fact that the backdrop of the story is Mumbai, where it is vital to place one’s dreams, and hopes with other feelings of despair together through a duct-tape and organically get habituated to its consumption in life. What the film did was made me recall most of the iconic moments from Hindi Cinema that originated (on-screen) from the land of opportunities. In a way, the film’s milieu of Mumbai is symbolic of the fact that now dreams, hopes, despair and survival of the thousands are overfilled into a tiny space way above it’s limit, and one is bound to change as a person when emotions are jammed together in a specified range of area, yet the driving force of hope amidst all the issues thrown in front of the characters makes them go fix those issues in their own way.

There is a mention of the word “Escapist”, where Mehernosh erupts at a certain point, and blames the other guys to be nothing but united in escaping their own individual lives. Well, he does make a very valid point. Escapism is the tendency to distract ourselves from any unpleasant, boring schedules of work and allying our minds into something else, be it movies, books, daydreaming, fantasy or any other form of entertainment. In a way, escapism can also be summoned up as a path where we run away from reality, just for that brief moment in our escapist cave, we feel more of ourselves, discover more about ourselves through our means of escapism, even in the context of the film, we do realize that yes they group of guys are running away from their realistic lives, and finding solace in a game of football on a Sunday morning, but only through this event in their lives, they discover a lot about themselves, and how they perceive their own individual relationships. Dominic earning his livelihood by being dressed as a joker at kid’s parties which is not going too well with him (ends up yelling at kids), Rashid discover old memories in his room, he is made to realize this sense through the presence of a rat in his room, Mehernosh wants to confess his feelings to a colleague yet had to see her suffer everyday through his boss, and Jayesh bhai trying to escape his noisy family to have a moment of peace of his own.    

The most charming scenes in the film happens between Arjun and Kavya, where both of them discover each other under an odd situation where Arjun acts as father-sitter for Kavya’s father who is suffering from dementia. Kavya narrates an incidence to Arjun, about how in her childhood she had a massive attack of pneumonia, and it was only her father who had not given up on her health. Another significant scenario of how beautifully and subtly director Milind Dhaimade brings the essence of hope into the scene. Arjun explains to Kavya about his decision to stay near his loved ones and be happy in his life. There is a very sincere honesty in the way Arjun tells us about how he did not want to enroll himself into the corporate culture after witnessing a bizarre incident that changed his ideology towards life. The moments between Kavya and Arjun at the beach reflected a state of hesitation on both ends, where each one of them expected the other person to make the move and initiate the real talk. They talk about how there is no space to enjoy little moments of joys in life, again a reference to space in the film, this time, perhaps it was being referred to an emotionally comfortable space of being with someone special, since the space in all the context of life has crammed up, leaving us vulnerable at times. At the climax point, they do meet at the terrace of a building, finally getting their desired emotional space to have a moment of intimacy. Kavya and Arjun’s chemistry in the film is quite equivalent to the coffee beans used in their relationship, it’s totally refreshing.   

Hindi Cinema has evolved tremendously over the time regarding the fascination with the city of dreams called Mumbai. Earlier the filmmakers focused on telling the stories of outsiders coming into the city with nothing but aspirations to earn a livelihood. Be it the charming Raj from Raj Kapoor’s “Shree 420”, who is seduced by the glamour offered to him in the city.  Vijay and Ravi with their mother looking to start a new chapter in their lives post an unfortunate incident in Yash Chopra’s “Deewar” comes to Bombay. The legendary Velu Naicker’s moral compass from Mani Ratnam’s “Nayakan” that told the tale of man drawn towards the darker side of a city. Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s “Parinda” explored the darker side of the city more extensively through two brothers with the metaphor of flight of freedom that pigeons took around the city. The iconic dialogue from Ram Gopal Verma’s cult film “Satya” where Bhiku Mhatre proclaims to be the king of the Mumbai. Satya, in my opinion was one of the early films that went ahead and explored Mumbai more as a character than simply a background of the city. As the film goes on, the more we learned about the mood of Satya, there was a parallel narrative of the moods of Mumbai in the form of it’s monsoon period, how the city functioned during Ganesh Chaturthi.  Over the years, films based on Mumbai have undergone drastic transformations, as if the filmmakers are no longer fascinated with the idea of an outsider coming into Mumbai and trying to survive in the middle of the chaos, now the focus has shifted to the insiders, their tales of survival. Nishikanth Kamath’s 2008 directorial venture “Mumbai Meri Jaan” talks about the lives of common Mumbaikars post the horrific 2006 train blast, and ends the film with the song "Bombay Meri Jaan" from the 1956 film C.I.D. I remember a conversation from Vishal Bhardwaj’s “Kaminey” where Bhope Bhau (a native Mumbaikar) tells Guddu that migrants like you are chewing the city like termites, to which he replies a statement that his father used to tell him that if the city is a big glass of milk, people like us acts as sugar, if we leave, milk will be unaffected, but will turn bland. The whole political, social and economical dynamics of the city has changed, so has the stories around Mumbai. It’s as if the stories of outsider’s no longer interest filmmakers, whereas the stories of problems and survival of Mumbaikars gives them a far more better content to project it on screen.

There is a similar theme of Space related issues in Anand Tiwari’s “Love Per Square Foot”, where a young couple is on a quest to find a decent space which they can call their own and owning a piece of land of our own in a city like Mumbai appears to be a mammoth task. The contrast between Love Per Square Foot and Tu Hai Mera Sunday is like talking about day and night, and no it does not mean the former is a dark story, by the comparison I mean, one is set against a backdrop of a dream of owning one’s own house whereas the latter talks about the hope on a Sunday morning. One talks about love, the other talks about friendship both being affected by lack of space in a city. In both the films, the characters are in desperate need of space, again the need is of both physical and emotional space. Sanjay Chaturvedi who lives in a railway quarter desires to have his own place, whereas Karina D’Souza wants to get out of a forced relationship and start on her own. In a quite ironic situation considering the context of the film which is dealing with lack of space in Mumbai, both of them share a kiss on crowded local train.    

I really find Arjun’s portrayal of being a nice guy and focusing on being happy with himself rather than aimlessly chasing the corporate dreams quite amusing. The film does not exaggerate this idea with any philosophical concepts which might have made it appear a bit pretentious on Arjun’s part but it appears simple and straightforward. He helps an old man without any motive, drops his plans of settling in either Europe or Brazil, because he realizes the value of happiness and being content in our lives, it’s a tricky thing to present in a character and not sound ostentatious, but the way Arjun’s character explains his idea of happiness, we are convinced of his decision.  

Tu Hai Mera Sunday is a warm, sincere film, which makes it a perfect watch on a Sunday or any other day, do watch it and you’ll end up the with a big smile on your face.