Ofcourse, you remember The Wonder Years, the television series (1988-1993) that gently nudged us back into the 60s, to the years of the first moon landing, the Kennedy saga, the Vietnam war filtered through the adolescence of Kevin Arnold (Fred Savage). You remember because the series captured not just for America but for all of us the days of our innocence.
This longing for the way we were, just needs the snatch of an old song, a long forgotten phrase, the stack of old comics to fill us with an almost unbearable nostalgia for the cities, homes we lived in, for a childhood, a teenage of deeply felt, intense joy and a heart wide open to the rain and sunshine of life.
Sanjivan Lal’s Bubble Gum revisits the template of The Wonder Years, placing a simple teenage infatuation in the context of the 80s and in a middle class colony in Jamshedpur. The home where the story is rooted has no luxuries but just about enough for a family of four and is reminiscent of Hrishikesh Mukerji’s cinema spun out of the golden threads of unfussy love, little epiphanies and heart-warming moments that in retrospect define life.
In this house, lives our hero Vedant (Delzad Sanjay Hirale), a skinny, hyper-sensitive, 14-year old who has just discovered that he is in love with Jenny (Apoorva Arora). She like the moonlit, pretty Winnie Cooper of The Wonder Years has a fringe, long hair and a face that can spark a million confusing emotions in a young boy’s throbbing heart. And there are two (hearts, that is) beating restlessly for her. Apart from Vedant, there is Ratan (Suraj Singh), the “villain” of the piece who chews on Phantom cigarettes, buys an occasional Debonair, steals love letters, blackmails his rival and spies on him with a pair of binoculars.
In the absence of coffee shops and malls, the hero and the heroine meet in a common friend’s house and talk awkwardly. He sometimes cranes his neck to look into the sprawling police bungalow she lives in and cycles behind her auto to catch her eye, with a rose dangling from his teeth. She just smiles, not giving anything away.
There is no artificial innocence or shocking precocity in the proceedings. The faces of the young actors are scrubbed clean of artifice. With his long curls, dreamy eyes and clothes straight out of an 80s black-and-white advertisement, Vedant almost looks like he has walked out of Hum Log. He lives with his wonderfully together mother Sudha (Tanvi Azmi. Such lucid eyes. Such a warm smile.) and father Mukund (Sachin Khedekar).
The two had acted in an old Doordarshan serial called Lifeline many years ago and are lovely to watch still as they try to work out the magical parenting formula that is neither too lax, nor too restrictive. They are simple folks. She corrects school papers in her free time. He reads magazines or comes home with bags bursting with goodies for his family. And they are over the moon when their other son Vidur comes home during the Holi holidays from a hostel. Vidur, played with moving conviction by speech and hearing impaired actor ( Sohail Lakhani) is effortlessly likable, generous to a fault and the parents, sensitive to his condition, want Vedant to take care of him and share his friends, his leisure with him.
This creates inarticulate frustration in Vedant who resents also the fact that on the dining table, Vidur is served first while he is asked to finish the left overs. And that he can’t learn piano like Jenny does while his brother gets an expensive hearing aid. More than anything else, he resents being less than his brother who on the surface has an impairment but is deeper and somehow more in harmony with life.
The story moves not so much in a linear fashion but from moment to moment, letting us savour the everyday ordinariness of times when setting the Holika(made up of stolen logs of wood and furniture) on fire was an all consuming business, as was the fleeting proximity of a special someone. When love letters were not emailed but hidden between the covers of Archies comics. When your status message was the heart you carved on your school desk. When long evenings were spent reading Amar Chitra Katha and Diamond Comics. And family outings meant riding an old car and going for a softy. Or riding pillion on a scooter to buy ice cream and chicken tikkas.
Bubble Gum is a coming of age story, yes, and not just in the context of love. But also because it brings us to that point when we learn, though grudgingly, that life is better when we are part of a community, a family unit, a close relationship with a sibling whose loyalty and love may be wordless but are things we cannot do without. And that your first love may not be your last.
Delzad Sanjay Hirale is a real find. An earnest young actor who slips into the skin of a young boy tortured by inadequacy, anger, jealousy and love. Sohail Lakhani grows on you with his half-finished, helpless attempts to show an impossible sibling just how much he is loved. Suraj Singh as Ratan is a hoot and speaks in that typical colloquial flavour that those who grew up in cities like Kanpur will remember with a wistful smile. What could have made the narrative richer is the backdrop of the cinema of the times, the radio jingles and the TV programmes families bonded over in those days.
Still if you are from a generation that grew up playing kabbadi in the building compound, collecting stamps in albums or if you were the girl who trembled while saying to a boy in his balcony, “I like you” or if you were the boy who heard these words and felt he would die just of sheer joy, this one is for you.
Reema Moudgil is the author of Perfect Eight (http://www.flipkart.com/b/books/perfect-eight-reema-moudgil-book-9380032870?affid=unboxedwri )