Ek Ticket, Ek Black Coffee: From Amrish Puri in DDLJ to Aamir Khan in Dangal – Filmi fathers are fabulous!

Before Bauji says, “Ja Simran ja, jee le apni zindagi!” he has uprooted his London wali kudiyaan and wifey and is forcing them to love his mitti and live in his Punjab (Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge).

Before he realises that his four sons are not just useless but mean enough to separate him from his wife of 40 years, Raj Malhotra needs to see the selfless love that Alok and Arpita shower on them (Baghban).

Before he tries to get into the stadium to see his years of hard work on his daughters bear fruit, Mahavir Singh Phogat is ‘Haanikarak Bapu’ (Dangal).

Then there’s Champak Bansal, a dad who puts everything on hold to send his daughter to England so she can get an education (Angrezi Medium); there’s Bhairav Singh, the meanest alcoholic dad to Rohan (Udaan); there’s Bhaskor Bannerji who is so involved with his toilet routine that he drives his daughter Piku crazy (Piku).

Cinematic dads in Bollywood are such awesome creatures, you look at your own dad - who worked most of his life, loved home food, played chess, read books, and dismissed every movie song and dance routine as a waste of time (except the ones in those black and white movies) - and wonder where he fits into your own cinematic universe.

Is he the dad who would be like Will Smith who would hide his desperation from his son and make sure that he is shielded from the cruel world as the two step out in The Pursuit Of Happyness? Would he be Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando, killing everyone who kidnapped his daughter? Or like Liam Neeson, threatening the kidnappers of his daughter on the phone, “I have a set of particular skills…Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you, but if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you and I will kill you.”

Mothers get songs written for them; poems written about them. Cinematic mothers are praised to high heaven: Maa ke haath ka khana, Maa ki mamta, Maa ke aanchal ki chhanv and more. But dads get to do the grunt work in cinema. We have seen cinema fathers come back home exhausted after work, even rich dads are grouchy and grumpy and insist on having their own way. No songs are written about his kindness and love, but he’s definitely “Sehat ke liye tu toh haanikaarak hai”... Even in Do Ankhen Barah Hath where the jailor treats the convict like a stern father, there are no songs to him. Only after the jailor dies trying to save the convicts that they realise how important he was to them.

Good dads like Saeed Mirza get smothered by mean guys like Kader Khan in Khoon Bhari Maang, scary dads breathe down your neck to go study instead of being on the Gram like Darth Vader. For a while you also wish your dad were like Captain Fantastic, sheltering you from all the bad things of this world and teaching you survival skills…

What about dads who are like Indiana Jones, always away on some adventure or the other (Indy even rescues his own dad in the Holy Grail), or dads like Rajkumar who run away from their wives like Nargis, leaving her and her two sons in Mother India?

Clueless but busy dads like Colin Firth in What A Girl Wants realise what they are missing when the daughter flies to England to seek out her father. Dads so in love with a dead spouse need a runaway child to bring him from Seattle to New York and discover love again (Sleepless In Seattle). 

Everyone should see Tim Burton’s Big Fish. We hear such fantastical stories about our dads, that there is merit in this awesome film where we follow Will Bloom as he moves from reality to fantasy piecing together the stories he has heard about his father.

No matter what slot you want to put your own dad in, remember to tell him you love him. Write him a song, a poem, and get to know him instead of just seeing him as a quiet man who is always there at the back of family pictures. Go out and watch his favourite movie with him, eat foods that he likes, and perhaps try to figure out a better gift for him this year than yet another expensive watch or a meal at a fancy restaurant. Who knows, babuji might end up saying, “Luke, I’m glad that I’m your father!”

(All images, unless mentioned otherwise, via YouTube/screengrab)

About the author:
Manisha Lakhe writes on films and TV shows, is a poet, teacher, traveller and mom (and not necessarily in that order). Could sell her soul for Pinot and a good cheesecake.

(Disclaimer: Views expressed in the above article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of OTTplay. The writer is solely responsible for any claims arising out of the contents of this article.)