VegPlanet — October 2017

Chi Va Chi Sau Ka

Initial release: 19 May 2017

Director: Paresh Mokashi

Music director: Narendra Bhide

Cinematography: Sudhir Palsane

Leads: Lalit Prabhakar and Mrinmayee Godbole

Run time: 136 minutes.

Language: Marathi, with some English.

Subtitles: English

C

hi Va Chi Sau Ka (trans. Mr and Mrs) is a light-

hearted romantic comedy with some elements of

drama.

For the first time in mainstream Marathi cinema, the

lead female character is portrayed as vegan, fiercely

passionate about animal rights, and strong-minded

and verbal about her opinions. In this love story, the

lead character, Savitri, works as a veterinarian at an

animal welfare organisation. She is under pressure

to get married, and so is the lead male character,

Satyaprakash. Satyaprakash is equally passionate about

water conservation and has made it his life’s mission.

The movie opens with their common friends being

deeply in love and getting married in court, but within

a few weeks, the marriage falls apart hilariously. This

makes Savitri sceptical of arranged marriages and

she comes up with a plan to live with the prospective

groom and his family before they decide on marriage.

Satyaprakash agrees to the plan, but both families are

scandalised.

Indians familiar with the arranged marriage system

usually know how families pull all strings to get the

prospective bride and groom to say yes; but here,

however, both families conspire to sabotage the plan

by playing the devil’s advocate.

Both Savitri and Satyaprakash decide to give it their all

to see if they are a good match. Satyaprakash decides

to give up meat during their ‘experiment’ of living

together, while Savitri accepts his obsessive water

conservation tactic of using an auto-shut timer on the

shower so that no one at home wastes water while

bathing. Satyaprakash’s parents keep a close watch on

the couple, which makes for a funny situational comedy

that the whole family can watch and enjoy.

Both slowly fall in love with each other and support each

other’s activism whole-heartedly. But one fine evening

they call it quits. One rainy evening, they find themselves

at each other’s throats—quite literally—and never want

to see each other again. Why would two level-headed

people, who are deeply in love with each other, end up

rolling on the floor pulling each other’s hair out?

Though this is a love story and not an animal rights

film, vegans are very well-represented. Though

Savitri‘s views are extreme in that she won’t even sit

in a rickshaw driven by a meat-eater, her monologue

about slaughterhouses is touching, and the actress’s

chemistry with animals is commendable.

Pushkar Lonarkar and Sharmishtha Raut, who play

Savitri’s younger brother and older heavily pregnant

sister, have great comic timing and manage to brighten

up every scene, despite their irrelevance in the plot.

Jyoti Subhash, who plays Satyaprakash’s forward-

thinking and fun-loving grandmother, has a small

subplot where she sneaks out to date a neighbour

without the consent of her son. This element makes the

film very progressive yet comic.

Of course, there is a happy ending! The movie gives

hope to vegans who are in love with meat-eaters and

reinforces the belief that vegans should date meat-

eaters without feeling conflicted.

Direction: 3.5/5

Editing: 3.5/5

Cinematography: 4/5

Plot: 4/5

• By Mannu Gujar