REVIEW: As the title suggests, writer-director Prashant Nair’s Indo-French production ‘Tryst with Destiny’ is inspired by a famous speech by Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India—which is used as a reference to the vision that he had put forth at the dawn of our Independence…of an India free of poverty, ignorance, inequalities and so on… And now, 75 years later, we’re still fighting those demons.
This anthology features four stories that highlight various inequalities that still persist in India and how these lead to actions by those of us who are part of society. The first snippet, ‘Fair and Fine’, is set in Mumbai and tells the story of billionaire Galava Mudiraj (Ashish Vidyarthi), who moved to the city at the age of eleven and made a fortune selling tea at Churchgate station. He has risen to become one of the city’s most influential people as a result of his hard work.
Galava Mudiraj has it all, with his supportive wife Yayati Mudiraj (Suhasini Maniratnam) and two daughters, Madhavi (Sahana Vasudevan) and Vaishali (Anika Radhakrishnan). However, when he goes to his morning routine of swimming in a five-star hotel while rescuing a puppy, he mistakenly stumbles beyond the hotel grounds, and security officers refuse to let him in. The guards argue with him and even call him names like ‘Kaala Jamun’, ‘Kalua’, and so on, which disheartens Galava and he learns that money can buy him anything except the colour of his skin. Clearly, Nair wants to highlight the grim reality that constitutes people-shaming or using slurs for people with a dark complexion. His protagonist and his discomfort with the scenario, are well-developed and bring gravitas to such a delicate issue.