In The Family Man Season 2, the politics of a nation runs parallel to that of a family-Entertainment News , Firstpost
Srikant Tiwari has to hold together a family as well as a nation. He symbolises Delhi, which has to deal with both claims of alienation from family members (contentious states) and threats to national security and sovereignty.
The first episode of Raj & DK’s espionage show The Family Man Season 2 establishes early on that a nation stands divided, and so does a family. Srikant Tiwari (Manoj Bajpayee) has retired from secret service agency TASC and is working at an IT company to spend more time with family. But has he retired as a dad?
Srikant soon realises that while he may have hung up his boots as a TASC agent, his journey to consolidate his family has just started. Soon, he rejoins TASC to avert a covert mission that aims to compromise national security. Because whether it is a family or a nation, protection and consolidation is a lifelong ordeal.
In a telling dinner table conversation scene, Srikant proposes that every family member — wife Suchitra (Priyamani), daughter Dhriti, and son Atharva — share what their day was like. Both Dhriti and Suchi dismiss the idea with monosyllables to get back at Srikant for suddenly resuming his Dad duties after years of alienation when he was away on missions. Later, Srikant complains he has been spending enough time with family now but they are not reciprocating. Suchi’s silent response reminds him that while it has been only a few years since he circled back to his family’s needs, the resentment for all the years before that is far too deep-seated for him to earn a quick turnaround.
In many ways, Srikant Tiwari symbolises Delhi, the power-hungry capital tasked with the delicately balanced duties of national welfare and building ties with other nations.
The former is often upheld as the primary duty of a nation’s leader, and the latter is reduced to mere ‘politics.’ While that may be the case, it is only when the two are in harmony that a nation can afford to grow.
For example, in the show, Prime Minister Basu (Seema Biswas) insists she will hold bilateral talks with the Sri Lankan Prime Minister in Chennai despite the immediate threats to assassinate her. She is advised to change the venue or delay the talks by the men around her, but she holds her ground. The single-minded quest is similar to that of Srikant to lead a mission to save the prime minister at a time when his family is on the brink of breaking down. Even when his daughter is harmed by a conspirator, he tries his best to not kill him, but capture him alive so he can get a lead into the PM assassination plan.
On the other hand, Srikant’s family, particularly his wife and daughter, live with a sense of betrayal and being shortchanged that is eerily similar to what many Kashmiris, Tamilians, Punjabis, Bengalis, and North-Easterners — groups with some history of secessionist sentiment — feel towards the rest of India.
A remote parallel can be drawn between Suchi gradually drifting towards Arvind (Sharad Kelkar), because they share a workplace and common interests, to Sajid, a Kashmiri Muslim, feeling more heard with Sameer (Darshan Kumar), an ISI agent. Similarly, Dhriti being swept away by her boyfriend Kalyan is resonant of Raji (Samantha Akkineni) gravitating towards the cause of Tamil Eelam as a Sri Lankan Tamil who has faced atrocities at the hands of the Sinhalese soldiers. In the show, Sajid and Raji, who represent the poles of India in Kashmir and Tamil Nadu, feel united by shared resentment and alienation towards the rest of the nation, and hence work on a common goal to destabilise it.
Priyamani in The Family Man
(What does that leave Atharv to symbolise? Is it Mumbai, which provides refuge, or at least a corner to people from all backgrounds and perspectives where they can be their own selves? He is the proverbial kandha or the shoulder every family member leans on after a spat.)
While the scale of implications may differ, both Srikant and his family members and the two warring geopolitical sides have to contend with the ethics of their choices. Both Srikant and Basu put their homes (literal and symbolical) at risk to serve what they feel is “the larger purpose.” Both end up dealing with the consequences, or at least with a close shave.
Dhriti ends up killing Kalyan in self-defense. But unlike Raji, who disposes the fragmented bodies of the men she has murdered with routine coldness, Dhriti’s ache of killing a human despite the circumstances is a glimpse into the rites of passage that Raji must have also undergone in early days. “You killed a terrorist,” Srikant tells her, in a similar fashion to how rebel leaders brainwash vulnerable members of their group.
Suchi’s demeanour throughout the show and the tone of her confession at the end of Season 2 hint at how she has ‘cheated’ with another man. She is told by her therapist earlier in the show that her confession will end her marriage. But the burden of truth and the inability to live with a lie are also what compel Sajid to break away from a nation that does not respect his identity and collude with a third party who does, even if it comes at the risk of treason and compromising sovereignty.
Samantha Akkineni in The Family Man Season 2
Srikant and Suchi’s rocky marriage is also a track that stands for the wide gap between North India and South India. The rift caused by Suchi’s (South India’s) claims of alienation against Srikant (North India or Delhi) is widened further by their cultural dissonance. The differences are explored through humour across the show when agents from North India or Mumbai collaborate with those in Chennai to thwart a mission against the nation. Chennai agent Muthu Pradhan (Ravindra Vijay) hits back at Maharashtrian JK Talpade (Sharib Hashmi) when he says, “I love South Indian food”: “Which South Indian food? There are four South Indian states.” Pradhan also mocks Talpade that he is aware of the reductive perception the rest of India has towards his state: “Tamilians matlab inna rascala, hai na?”
Even Suchi and her daughter Dhriti, who are experiencing the same feelings thanks to Srikant, do not become allies but start operating on different plains. Consumed in their respective worlds, they are unable to bond over their shared grievances. This could be juxtaposed against the case of the Sri Lankan Tamils, who get little help or empathy from Tamil Nadu, despite the fact that they are culturally similar and have a shared past. An argument between the mother and the daughter lead to Dhriti ghosting her family to spend time with her boyfriend.
Ashlesha Thakur as Dhriti in The Family Man Season 2
Suchi’s state of mind also finds an explanation in the argument put forth by PM Basu when she is asked to withdraw the bilateral talks in Chennai to avoid threat to her life. She claims that she was shamed when she went to Chennai for working closely with the Sri Lankan Prime Minister. But when the city was damaged by floods, she allotted Rs 100 crore from the national budget for rehabilitation because of her motherly instinct. But she continues to face the consequences because whether it is the people (of Chennai) or an offspring, mothers are taken for granted everywhere.
At the end of Season 2, when Srikant gets a medal from PM Basu, narratives of the ‘family man’ and the ‘national agent’ coincide. His wife and daughter realise that his service and loyalty is not towards another family, but towards their nation. And like all the lakhs of families residing in India, theirs is also merely a subset of the nation. But in the very next few moments, we see Suchi make a confession to Srikant with teary eyes, and an anti-national conspiracy brewing in another corner of India. While one would love a Season 3, one does not need another instalment to arrive at the conclusion that both the family and the nation will continue to wrestle for the attention of the titular hero.
The Family Man Season 2 is streaming on Amazon Prime Video India.
