Home is more than just a tangible structure. It is also the end to the many means families in India juggle with, the destination that a meandering, sometimes wayward journey needs as a moment of repose and reflection. To the undefined way of life, a house is often the qualifier for some sort of form. It is structure in the literal and the metaphorical sense. Hotstar’s Home Shanti, is a feel-good, slice-of-life drama about the Joshi family building that dream roof to cover your head with. But what it also manages to convey, is that like houses, familial structures also have to be built, watered, nurtured and protected. Foremost though, Home Shanti almost improbably rewrites the role women play in something that has always been considered a man’s job.
In the fourth episode of the Hotstar series, the Joshis split into teams of two after a bureaucratic hurdle prop up just as their house is about to be built. Sarla Joshi played by the delightful Supriya Pathak heads to the SDM’s office where alongside her daughter and her cheerful contractor she tries to manipulate a situation that would usually be overseen by the men of the house. The men on the other hand, including the poet and patriarch Umesh (Manoj Pahwa) head where they try to open a digital locker. Men are sent to rescue while women head to avenge. Both succeed in the same purpose but the women overcome a far greater social challenge – navigating the insides of a sarkari office. Crucially, though they get it done not by borrowing from the men’s guide of rubbing palms the right way but by standing firm, despite themselves. This little sequence of accomplishing something municipal yet significant is where Home Shanti really soars.
Based in Dehradun, the show circles the Joshi family in the run-up to the construction of their dream house. While Mummy Joshi is the working principal of a school, Father Joshi writes poetry and does little else other than pacify tense situations. “Main Saraswati ka upasak hun, mujhse Laxmi ki upeksha matt rakho,” he says. It’s a role most men can’t play in actual life, because it is expected of them to be purposeful, in a mechanical sense. The background of this otherworldly life choice by the family’s patriarch is never discussed or dissected by the series which makes it that much more radical. The writers of the show manage to successfully normalise what is otherwise a glaring anomaly. This is Gullak, but slightly woke and much more confident about the things it need not explain.
Like SonyLiv’s Gullak the Joshis live in a kinder world, where courtesies are regularly extended, evil is banished as a concept and most transgressions are forgiving in nature and consequence. The similarities between the two shows don’t just end there because Umesh’s poetry, like the actual Gullak’s narration, brings the curtain down on most episodic truths. Sometimes it is the walls, the roof, the window, every nut and bolt that constitutes a house is rechristened through his words as a view into the Indian middle-class’ life and less acknowledged philosophies. Both shows deal with episodic hiccups and unanticipated challenges and both emerge with a more consolidated view of the Indian family. But while Gullak was more straightforward, Home Shanti flips gender roles to quietly usher in a new, ambitious normal – women taking charge.
In the second episode of the show, each member of the Joshi family tries to lure an architect for something they each want. The women, for a change here, have their personal wants, desires they have held close and won’t abandon for the sake of a more collective dream; things Indian TV soaps taught us should be the norm. Sarla is both the brains and at times the brawn of the Joshi family but not in a hideously violent way. She takes charge by channelling her knowledge, her reputation but not by aggressively installing it as a flex in every conversation she anchors. There is grace and a certain amount of restraint to her method of control. Yes, everything is chaotic around her but Sarla manages things without the grin of victimhood. In this family, the women drive the cars, confront men, refuse to give into worldly realities like bribes and corrupt officers and aren’t afraid to stand against the direction of the wind.
Ultimately, Home Shanti is too ephemeral to speak about its politics. Because it is a lightweight comedy, most characters in the show operate without egos, historical baggage and therefore at times, even depth. It is a show that exists in the moment – including the construction of the house that happens at warp speed. But even through its warm, racing view of a charming Indian family the show manages to say something more than the sum of the genre’s familiar limits. In fact, Home Shanti’s brand of comedy and agreeable minor conflicts though travelled, take this journey with brand new drivers at the helm – its women, and trust me they’ll get us where we want to go.
Manik Sharma writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between.
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