Three of Us: A Slice Of Grief

      Three of Us opens with an unraveling of Shailaja’s life, setting the stage for a journey that unfolds in multitudes. The movie is about Shailaja coming to terms with her illness, and the many shades of her psyche during this process. Shailaja and her husband, Dipankar, live in Mumbai. In the first few stills, we see her making thoughtful lists about every little task she needs to do. We also see her being forgetful of various things: she forgets to add salt to the poha she made for breakfast, she fails to recognize the neighborhood lady who sells her aachar, and at a social gathering, one of her acquaintances remarks, “Kitni baar to bataya hai, baar baar bhool jaati ho aap” (‘How many times do I need to tell you? You constantly forget’), leading to an awkward silence in the group. Shailaja has recently been informed that she is suffering from dementia, and it is only going to get worse. It is quite eerie that until very late in the movie the name of the illness is never uttered. The illness feels more like a narrative device as a transition towards the more substantial themes of the story, rather than a fully developed element on its own. The camera is interested in Shailaja’s psyche, and we are constantly aware that she is distressed. The essay attempts to unravel how her sadness is configured in the movie, and what happens when unreasonable, insurmountable grief strikes. 

An old lover and the town

      To unravel the subconscious inclinations of her discomfort, Shailaja requests Dipankar to travel with her to Vengurla, a small Konkan town. Shailaja spent her adolescent and early teen years in this small town. Dipankar asks Shailaja, “Why do you suddenly want to go there?” To which, Shailaja responds, “Even I don’t know, I just have been meaning to visit the place for a while.” It is in Vengurla, that the movie alters in its tone from darkness and mysticism to a phantasmatic sweetness. Her journey is built around silences with curious eyes and long familiar gazes into the void. She visits her old school and serendipitously encounters a stranger who turns out to be an old friend. She gets to know that her childhood sweetheart, Pardeep Kamat, still lives in Vengurla. In the following scenes, we see that Dipankar and Shailaja meet Pradeep for a quaint tea, and the conversation is filled with an awkward nostalgia for the past. Pradeep asks Shailaja, “Aap chai aur lengi” (‘Do you want more tea?’), and to this, Shailaja responds, “Ye aap aap kya laga rakha hai, school mein to tu bolte the’‘ (‘Why are you referring to me in a formal language now? you used to speak informally with me in school’). Sigmund Freud, in Mourning and Melancholia, elucidates that “mourning is commonly the reaction to the loss of a beloved person or an abstraction taking the place of the person, such as fatherland, freedom, an idea and so on (…)” (Freud 204). Three of Us builds a narrative of mourning a lost time, a nostalgia of childhood, reflected through the ethereal joy of Shailaja’s face after the three of them, Pradeep, Shailaja, and Dipankar spend a day together. 

      The movie builds a parable of grief through the unconscious which is to be savored in the delicate intimacy of memories. Shailaja had never talked about these illustrious characters from her past with her husband; about Pradeep or her old childhood home or the weight of a silent guilt she has been carrying since childhood. As Freud articulates in his exploration of mourning and melancholia, “In the case of melancholia the cause of melancholia is known to the subject, when we know who it is, but not what it is about the person that he has lost (…), melancholia is the loss of an object that is withdrawn from consciousness, unlike mourning, in which no aspect of the loss is unconscious”. (Freud 205). It’s clear that this is not a secret she’s intentionally keeping. It is a form of knowledge that is a secret to herself too. The audience visits the alleys of mourning and melancholia through three significant interactions: Shailaja’s visit to her old childhood home where she is reminded of the deep wound she is carrying, her visit to the old lady who lives near the sea, and finally, through Pradeep’s love and forgiveness for her.

The house: The site of the wound

     On visiting her childhood home Shailaja seems conflicted, the background music is all-engulfing, with grim temple chants and a piece of faint music in a minor key. She musters courage and steps into the front yard of her childhood home. A kid is playing outside the house, she is greeted by Ajji (grandma/aunty). Shailaja conveys to Ajji that this is her childhood home and that she used to live here a long time back, and would just like to look around. The kid shows her the house. But Shailaja is not moving with confidence; instead, she hesitates, her gaze lingering in these rooms with a wary awareness of their unsettling texture. A brief flashback occurs: the camera momentarily focuses on a person sitting on a swing, conversing with a little girl in front of them. We return to the present, Ajji is standing in front of her, Shailaja smiles and says, “Mein jab choti thi na, to yaha raha karti thi” (‘I used to live here when I was young’). Soon after, the music shifts from mystic suspense to revelatory dark sounds of crickets, bats, and cello bass, and the kid shouts “Ao na kaki, kya hua?” (‘What happened aunty, why are not coming?’). We are now in the repressed part of Shailaja’s psyche, the subconscious that has not been revealed to the self; and yet the self is acutely aware of its presence. There is a well in the backyard, the camera focuses on it, and then we pan out. 

    The scene after the encounter with the backyard is an incomplete one. We are left with a strange outlook of our protagonist, unaware of the reason for the suspenseful and dreary music. Neither do we know why the scene changed to a reminiscent lunch with an old friend, another scene with Pradeep’s poetry, and lunch at his house, almost like a sigh of relief, a break from the subconscious. Following this unsettling encounter with the house, there’s a peculiar journey to a fort-like location surrounded by lush greenery. We enter through one entrance and emerge from another, creating an intriguing yet relief-like experience. The joy and not fear of terrains; almost as if, the burden has been shared, as if, something that was not to be discovered, has already revealed itself. The hiatus is filled with the soulful and beautiful voice of  Pt. Gandharva singing Surdas’s Nain Ghat Ghat Tan. Freud says “In mourning the world has become poor and empty; in melancholia, it is the ego that has become so” (Freud, 207). For Shailaja, the confrontation with her house and the backyard were the sublime ruptures of melancholia that created space for her to explore the deep contours of her grief.

The old lady by the sea: Reliving grief 

     We later get to know that Shailaja lost her sister in the well that is in the backyard of her childhood house.  She doesn’t discuss this incident with anyone, except a woman her friends call “budhi amma” (old woman) who lives in a hut near the sea. We briefly hear about the old woman during lunch with Pradeep and Shailaja’s classmate, Rupali, whose mother was their English teacher. Pradeep asks Rupali, “Vo buddhi amma abhi zinda hai kya?” (‘Is that old woman still alive?’), they promptly conclude that she must have died by now. The English teacher recalls, “Shailu tu jati thi na uske paas, ghanto ghanto bate karte the na tum log?” (‘Shailu, you used to go to her place, right? You two used to talk for hours, didn’t you?’). Shailaja faintly acknowledges her, without adding much. The movie doesn’t offer the audience much context about the nature of their relationship, except that they share the intimacy of conversations. A deliberate act of surrender that lasted for hours.

     In a fit, Shailaja finds herself outside the old women’s hut. She introduces herself, trying to rekindle her memory “Pehechana mereko?, mein aati thi bachpan mein?” (‘Do you recognise me, I used to visit you when I was a kid’),  The woman responds, “Abi bhi to ati hai choti. Bahar kyu khadi thi itne din or ye naya basta kaha se lai?” (‘You still come here. Why were you standing outside for so long, and where did you get this new bag from?’).  The old lady shares the hardships she has seen over the years and asks Shailaja, “Tu kya lai hai baste mein, kuch to lai hogi bata” (‘What have you got in your bag, you must have got something?’). Shailaja tells her how she was playing with her sister one day in the backyard, near the well, where they got into a playful fight. The sister started maneuvering the rope of the well and in an attempt to save her, Shailaja lost the grip of the rope and before she knew it, her sister was dead. 

   The etymology of grief is rooted in the Latin word gravis, which refers to heavy or something burdensome; through ‘basta’ or baggage, we traverse the land of the subconscious. In the Freudian milieu, the weight Shailaja carries stems from mourning her sister, a grief even she is not consciously aware of. This repression of  the absence of the object of her desire transforms her grief into deep melancholia. It is only through the re-telling and reliving of a part of herself that got consumed by time, that she comes to terms with herself. I believe that this play on time and memory is represented by the old woman.  In this sense, the old woman becomes the  metaphor of memory that transcends the teleological notion of time as linear. In an exchange between the two, Shailaja tells buddhi amma that everyone thought she might have passed by now. To this she replies, I am here because you remembered me. She exists as a fantasy and reality, quite like memory, both influencing Shailaja to feel the repressed truth and also to relive the past in the present. The past and present therefore, are not two separate entities. 

On the Ferris wheel: The circle of time 

     The first name our narrator mentions upon reaching Vengurla is Pradeep Kamat. He works at the bank, lives with his wife and two children, and exudes a gentle sensibility. Despite his difficult life, he has not become bitter; instead, he finds catharsis in art. It is also clear from the silences and glances between Shilaja and Pradeep that unresolved conversations linger between them. Pradeep struggles to communicate with her in the presence of Dipankar. It is no surprise that Pradeep helps Shailaja throughout her journey. He takes her and Dipankar to her childhood home, invites them for lunch at his place, and generally becomes an observer of their journey.

    Soon after the incident at the old woman’s hut, a new dawn rises, bringing a lighter and calmer morning. Our protagonist is cheerful, the three of them head to a local mela (fest) for the rides. Shailaja and Pradeep take a ride on the Ferris wheel. At this moment we learn Pradeep has been harboring a grievance against Shailaja. He tells her that the mela was the last place they met before the incident with her sister. He had brought flowers for her, but she told everyone that he had gotten them for everyone. She got mad at him and refused to sit with him on the Ferris wheel. That was the last time they saw each other before Shailaja and her family left town. She apologises and tells him, she is glad she visited Vengrula to meet him. 

    Pradeep’s grievance can be seen as an external manifestation of Shailaja’s internal struggle. His questioning of why she took so long to return highlights the guilt and unaddressed emotions that Shailaja harbors. The Ferris wheel conversation symbolises the circular, repetitive nature of melancholia, where past events continually haunt the present. Shailaja’s apology to Pradeep and her acknowledgment of his significance in her life represents a critical moment of catharsis. This act of verbalizing her regret and appreciation marks a shift from melancholia towards mourning, as she begins to externalize and address her repressed emotions.

    It is intriguing to consider what the three in the title represent. Is it the allegorical personification of the three main characters—Pradeep representing the gentle softness of Shailaja’s past, Dipankar representing the grim reality of the present, and Shailaja herself symbolizing the uncertainties of her future? Or do the three signify the recurring triad of memories, mourning, and melancholia? The title Three of Us encapsulates not only the literal trio, but also, the intricate interplay of past, present, and future. It mirrors the internal conflict between holding on and letting go, embodying the dynamic process of grappling with loss and seeking resolution.