2004, Winter

It was the winter of 2004: the winter of endings, the winter of beginnings; there was beer, vodka, whisky; there were bikes, zooming past the stadium and the empty roads of 70; there was stress, there was fun; there was fear, there was procrastination; there was insecurity, there was a sense of wonder; there were mistakes, there were discoveries; there were setbacks, there was freedom; there was hope, there was inception. It was unlike other winters. It was bright and invigorating. It was a defining winter.  

It was an epoch of beginnings. It was a prelude to the memorable years to follow.

Review: ‘We Are Family’

© Dharma Productions

Family Fatale

Five minutes into the remake, before the characters get a limbering up, the one-sided strife begins and drearily continues throughout the full-length. The power is skewed towards Maya. On the other hand, Shreya (Kareena Kapoor) is an embodiment of a humanitarian, who despite facing hostility and disapproval from everyone in the family, renders herself to their service in quest of their acceptance, notwithstanding that Aman (Arjun Rampal) had unceremoniously dumped her. The children surprisingly do not get on nerves, unlike the pesky kids in Thoda Pyar Thoda Magic. 

There is understated contempt towards career-minded single women, which eventually manifests when Maya exhorts Shreya to accept that maternal instincts seize a woman they day she is born. Shreya accepts the “challenge” and gets apprenticed under her. Even so Maya continues to be capricious towards the propitiator, alternating tolerance and hostility. The bickering keeps resurfacing from time to time.

Deigning to the sanctimoniously feministic vein of the contemporary society, We Are Family also genuflects the patriarchal cinema of the eighties and the nineties: a woman’s primary purpose in life is to get married and have children. There ought to be no regard for choice in a herd-minded, snobbish world.