Katran: the tragic toxicity of a long-term relationship

By Bakhtawar Ahmed

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The film opens with a broken vase on the floor. What is it; a symbol of broken relationship or a symbol of the breaking point?

The old house belongs to an old aged couple who are in their 60s now. The wife is quietly weeping into her phone and he is staring into space in his room. There is the emptiness you feel in the house where a couple has been living for years.

There is the air of tiredness in the house. They look like they are tired of holding onto things for too long but now that’s enough. It’s done! Are they done with the responsibilities that had tied them for these long years? Do they really want to set themselves free from all the duties and move on in their lives, separately?

These are the questions that pop up in your minds when you see on screen; an elderly couple (played by Piyush Mishra and Alka Amin), who now have almost quit talking to each other.

The cab is waiting at the door and they are leaving to somewhere, to decide the uncertain future of their relationship. You’ll get a slight a hint that their destination is a lawyer’s office and all the way each one of them is receiving calls from their children.

Their children are trying very hard to stop their parents by taking this step of separation but it looks like the couple has decided to part their ways now. The couple has decided to end their 36 years of marriage.

Katran sheds light on the decaying marriage of a couple. The story focuses on a crumbling relationship of an elderly couple. It gives you a very soft touch of the reality which almost all of us try to ignore in our lives. We see couples fighting, our parents having an argument but we choose to stay silent as an excuse that it is all part of the life. That’s how marriages are, right?

But what about couples that cross the threshold of tolerance? And what about those who dare to express – and even worse (or better), act upon this disillusionment? The theory of compromises and everything we have as an excuse to continue an unhappy relationship, Katran puts into context the tragic toxicity of a long-term marriage.

Through their bickering; first in a taxi, then at a divorce lawyer’s office – we learn that he is a recently retired government banker. Which means that, like most couples who have “done their duty” by successfully raising their kids, they cannot work out the concept of sharing 24 hours a day with each other without an agenda. The relationship was functional with distractions and routines. But now they have nowhere to escape, with one’s little habits and quirks magnified in the face of endlessly empty days.

The old man is dismissive; the old woman is irritated with her insults. Their grown-up children have become much like movie-watching audiences. This short film is all about how the couple has forgotten how to build and rebuild relationships, friendships, marriages or any other. Katran is deeply relatable and simple, that unfolds the many facets of a struggling relationship.”

The conversation at the lawyer’s offices makes so many things clear to both of them. Things they never said each other for 35 years came out with sudden burst of emotions. Emotional dialogues such as, “Aadmi mard nahi hota hai, paisa mard hota hai,” the old man mourns, rather philosophically, but the truth is there that he is done with all the efforts and compromises.

But parenthood is not a hindrance anymore. The lawyer listens, bemused at first, but slowly understands that their agony is real, and that experience is not quite a substitute for happiness.

The couple is finally asked to stay together for a while, before they can be granted separation. That step turns out to be the turning point of their lives, as it makes them realize what they might miss if they separate.

Katran echoes the heartbreaking conflict. This movie is a two-way street of sadness. It’s hard to digest the reality of two people, who have nobody and nothing else left in the world, parting ways because they prefer the silence of nothingness over the noise of companionship.

Katran ends with a lovely moment. A noise is heard, and the two rush out to see if the other is O.K. There are no smiles, no hugs, no background score. There’s just a look of resignation that reveals the legal entrapment of marriage. The broken vase was fixed – just like the situation at the end!

The 14-minute short Piyush Mishra and Alka Amin starrer, written and directed by Prem Singh Katran is available on YouTube.

If you like the film and this review, do let us know in the comments!

Watch the film:

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Bakhtawar Ahmed