How Tu Hai Mera Sunday serves as the perfect eulogy for Shiv Kumar Subramanaim, a poignant semi-anonymous figure

At first glance, Milind Dhaimade’s supremely underrated Tu Hai Mera Sunday (2016) looks deceptively simple — a buddy drama about five survivors who optimize the promise of Sundays to assert their space in a city bursting at the seams with inhabitants. In many ways, it is perhaps one of the most definitive Mumbai films made in the last decade, conveying the deep contradictions of the simultaneously freeing and stifling environment of the city. The cast — Barun Sobti, Avinash Tiwary, Rasika Dugal, Shahana Goswami, and Maanvi Gagroo — does not exactly boast stars. Instead, it stars character actors who embody their personal struggles of being seen as a viable lead in mainstream Hindi cinema to play people who remain unseen in an indie film.   Still, it is impossible to think of Tu Hai Mera Sunday without thinking of Shiv Kumar Subrahmaniam, whose dignified turn holds the reins to the moral compass of the film, lending it an irreplicable poignancy. It is rare that a supporting actor ends up becoming emblematic of a film without having as much as a single line of dialogue. It is rarer even that they manage to stand out in a film staggered with an ensemble committed to conveying emotions that go beyond the written word.   The veteran actor and screenwriter appears in the second minute of  Tu Hai Mera Sunday. He is Appa, an old, helpless, dementia-afflicted patriarch whose life is lost to the burden of time. We first see him on a bridge as he crosses paths with the leads of the film, interrupting their banter as they head out to play football at Juhu Beach. He mumbles something incoherent to the group as they walk away, preparing to follow the cycle of life and leave him behind. But something about his condition appeals to Arjun (Sobti), one of the protagonists, and soon, he is with the gang on the beach, gazing wordlessly at the ball. Dhaimade sets his opening credits on the beach as a game of football gets underway. For most of the time, Subrahmanyam’s Appa remains in the corners of the frame with his back to the viewer; in one shot, the camera focuses on the image of his hands behind his back. Except Appa is not happy with being just an observer — his desperate need to belong to a world that has moved on manifests in the way he sneaks into the action without any warning, as if he is an overeager infant in an adult’s body. One of the first comic interludes of the film occurs here — an errant kick by Appa lands on an unsuspecting woman, resulting in the gang getting kicked out of the beach.   That is not to say that the film only sees him as the proverbial old guard in a coming-of-age tale of young drifters. Sure, Appa acts as the trigger for the central love-story between Arjun and his caregiver daughter Kavya (Goswami). But more importantly, his presence in Tu Hai Mera Sunday is rooted as a cautionary tale for its five leads. It is in the lessons of his past that eggs Arjun and his friends to confront the future they are striving to avoid.   Subrahmaniam’s face, a mix of juvenile indifference and comical brashness, remained an absolute scene-stealer throughout the course of the film.

Even though the film does not get to utilise the actor’s trademark deep voice, it manages to joyously capture the pleasures of seeing him on screen.

As a portrait of crumbling masculinity and sanity, Subrahmaniam’s heartbreaking physicality mirrors Anthony Hopkins’ award-winning turn in _The Father_ .   Even though Tu Hai Mera Sunday was neither the actor’s final role ( _Meenakshi Sundareshwar_ ) nor his most popular outing (2 States), the film ended up offering the perfect coda to Subrahmaniam’s illustrious career. Not only did it underline the actor’s masterful hold over his craft — for instance, his uncanny ability to evoke generosity through a performance by doing so much with so little. But by also casting him as a man whose memory worked against him, Tu Hai Mera Sunday unwittingly spotlighted the rich legacy of Subramaniam’s artistic mind.   Every scene in the film that features Subrahmanyam is framed with a visible reverence, as if it has been entrusted with the task of situating the context of his influence on Hindi cinema. In an illustrious career that spanned three decades, Subrahmaniam acted in countless movies, although he remains most recognisable for playing iterations of the terse South-Indian patriarch in commercial Hindi cinema. In a movie landscape where memory is fleeting, it is easy to see why most viewers might forget the extent of the actor’s contribution. The writer behind four seminal Hindi films — Parinda (1989), 1942: A Love Story (1994), Iss Raat Ki Subah Nahin  (1996), and Hazaaron Khwashein Aisi (2005) — that will be remembered as intensely as they are rewatched in the coming years, Subrahmaniam lived and died in semi-anonymity.   For the new generation of Bollywood, the actor continued being a stranger in the same way that Appa felt to the young leads of Tu Hai Mera Sunday. I am not sure whether the actor’s casting in the film had any autobiographical leanings — a significant life being reduced to an everyman existence felt true for both Appa, the character and Subrahmaniam, the actor playing him. But I am certain about the importance of Tu Hai Mera Sunday as a record of Subrahmanyam’s artistry, and as an act of remembering an artist who was more than just a character actor.   It is why everytime his face props up on screen in Tu Hai Mera Sunday, it accompanies his distinguished credentials instead of being divorced from it. After all, what is acting if not the sum total of a life lived?

Poulomi Das is a film and culture writer, critic, and programmer. Follow more of her writing on  Twitter.

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