Pictured: 'Samosa, anyone?' Alia (Sophia Ali, left) and her best friend, Neha (Anita Kalathara) in a party scene (one of many) from the comedy-drama, 'India Sweets and Spices', a New Jersey-set mother-daughter drama written and directed by Geeta Malik. Still courtesy of Bleeker Street (US) / Lightbulb Film Distribution (UK) / SK Entertainment
Completed in 2019 but first shown at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival in 2021, India Sweets and Spices, written and directed by Geeta Malik, is an amiable but not especially ambitious New Jersey-set mother-daughter story that affirms female solidarity in the face of hypocrisy. Its basic message is that Indian men whose marriages are arranged by their parents are bound to cheat. Its supplementary message is that Indian mothers suppress their true personalities for the sake of appearances. Whether you can reveal your true self and keep the nice house with the swimming pool out back is open to debate, but India Sweets and Spices is a feel-good movie set in a well-appointed neighbourhood of Ruby Hill, filled with affluent Americans whose families migrated from India. We admire the earrings, the fake décor, not to mention the books that you cannot read, and the complete absence of racial hatred – here, there are class tensions, instead. We especially salivate over food. How can we be expected to watch plates of samosas being passed around at multiple parties for ninety minutes without thinking, I’d like one of those?
I half-expected the film to be a romantic comedy but there are enough of those in Indian cinema. Malik’s film celebrates the struggle for social justice, albeit in a bittersweet way. Our hero, Alia Kapur (Sophia Ali, seen most recently in the video game-inspired adventure, Uncharted, opposite Tom Holland) is a UCLA student with a history of activism who returns home for the summer, waking up after her end-of-term celebration to find that she has given herself a haircut. Her mother, Sheila (Manisha Koirala) is anxious for her to have her eyebrows threaded and to attend parties with the rest of the family – she has two younger siblings. Alia feels far more comfortable in the company of her father, Ranjit (Adil Hussain) who joins her for a jog around the neighbourhood when he isn’t off playing golf. She isn’t keen to be paired off with Rahul (Ved Sapru) who is handsome, genial but something of a playboy. She is far more taken with Varun (Rish Shah), who helps his parents run a grocery store, the ‘India Sweets and Spices’ of the title. When Alia first locks eyes on him – sent on an errand to buy biscuits - her hair is blown back as if by an off-screen stylist with a hairdryer. It is interesting that Alia is shown from Varun’s point of view, but Malik is not-so-subtly making the point that Alia isn’t searching for a man. Romance isn’t at the heart of the film.
Alia recklessly invites Varun and his parents, Gurvinder (Raj Kala) and Bhairavi (Deepti Gupta) to her parents’ party, whereupon we encounter the Inciting Incident: Ranjit is caught kissing Rahul’s mother. Ranjit’s arm is around the woman’s waist, their faces close to one another; you can practically hear the violins and wailing. In my head, the revelation is a series of crash-zooms; it might as well be. Before then, there is a surprise: Bhairavi recognises Sheila. They both attended Delhi University together. Bhairavi shows little enthusiasm for the past; by the end of the film, we discover why.
Pictured: Alia's guests, including Bhairavi (Deepti Gupta, second left), Gurvinder (Raj Kala) and Varun (Rish Shah, right) arrive in a scene from the comedy-drama, 'India Sweets and Spices', written and directed by Geeta Malik. Still courtesy of Bleeker Street (US) / Lightbulb Film Distribution (UK) / SK Entertainment
No sooner does Bhairavi sit down on a sofa than two women in well-decorated saris get up and leave. They return to ask her whether she has any stories about Sheila. Bhairavi is reticent. Gurvinder is equally frowned upon, Ranjit’s friends are unimpressed by the manual nature of his business. Later, Bhairavi will remind two young women that her family achieved success through hard work – Varun is off to UCLA in the fall. ‘Yes,’ she is told, ‘but some people achieve success faster.'
Alia is furious with her father and slightly annoyed with her best friend, Neha (Anita Kalathara) who she hoped would bring marijuana and not snacks when they meet outside the party to express outrage. Alia goes through her options, including rehab. ‘Rehab isn’t bad,’ notes Reha, ‘it’s like a spa where you can cry.’ Alia is more annoyed with her mother, who knows about and tolerates the affair; Ranjit’s trips to play golf are a façade. Climbing through Varun’s conveniently situated ground floor bedroom window, Alia seeks consolation. Varun accuses Alia of humiliating his parents. ‘Why did you invite us?’ ‘You didn’t know anybody,’ Alia replies, ‘I thought it would be a great chance to meet people.’ Naturally they kiss.
For some time, Rahul ignores Alia’s text messages, shown on the screen in what is now a common movie trope. Then he responds. He intends to do nothing about the relationship; it does not concern him. Sheila meanwhile continues to maintain a façade, dining with four friends as if in a Desi episode of Sex and the City, which is more like ‘Chai in the Suburbs’. She pointedly picks up the cheque to demonstrate her status.
Alia is unable to move forward until she looks at a photograph of her parents. Opening the back panel she discovers another photograph of five women, all with their heads shaved. Paying Varun another visit, Alia seeks answers from Bhairavi, who opens up her heart and photograph album.
There are multiple parties and at one point Alia is photographed next to Rahul. The two annoying neighbourhood girls, who Alia will later describe as interchangeable and lacking character (blame the scriptwriter), place the photo in front of Varun to end his relationship with Alia. It certainly increases tension.
Pictured: If this was a rom com, this would be the poster.' Varun (Rish Shah, left), Alia (Sophia Ali, centre) and Rahul (Ved Sapru) in a scene from the mother-daughter comedy-drama, 'India Sweets and Spices', written and directed by Geeta Malik. Still courtesy of Bleeker Street (US) / Lightbulb Film Distribution (UK) / SK Entertainment
We get used to the idiom. Every older woman is referred to as an auntie, whether related or not. One pinches Alia’s cheek whenever she is standing next to Rahul to ask, ‘when am I buying a wedding dress?’ Until, that is, Alia glares at the chief offender and cries, ‘don’t!’ The women are far more aggressive than the men, as if their effort to maintain the patriarchy – the word comes up a few times – is the only way to maintain their consumerist, status driven lifestyle. Needless to say, children are judged by their ability to get into medical school.
The film builds to the ultimate vanity party to celebrate Sheila and Ranjit’s wedding anniversary, where Alia decides to finish what she started and pay homage to Natalie Portman in V for Vendetta or Sinead O’Connor. Her defiant protest is a truth bomb. In a nice touch, Alia’s younger sister asks Alia for her hair band – it is not as if she has a use for it.
In the finale, Alia is taken to the airport by her mother, who by now has taken to paying for her own lunch and not that of her so-called friends. Alia arrives back in her dorm in what we take as an homage to Lady Bird (although she doesn’t get drunk). Varun promises to get in touch. He’d welcome a friend in Los Angeles.
Pictured: Cutting the cake, Alia's parents Sheila (Manisha Koirala) and Ranjit (Adil Hussain) in a scene from the mother-daughter New Jersey-set comedy-drama, 'India Sweets and Spices', written and directed by Geeta Malik. Still courtesy of Bleeker Street (US) / Lightbulb Film Distribution (UK) / SK Entertainment
Malik’s film celebrates the colourful dynamism of successful Indians in America with their flashy cars and plentiful biscuits but also critiques their fake sympathy and snobbery. In the end, Sheila crosses the class divide to embrace Bhairavi, with whom she shared an activist part. We are shown flashbacks not of Sheila trying to break a woman out of prison, or even her arrest, but the aftermath. A bruised face young Sheila collected her father in a car and packed off to be married. The wedding photograph symbolises not happiness but the containment (or salvation) of a subversive, who may otherwise have been killed.
India Sweets and Spices is very much the stuff of Bollywood movies, with improbable twists, a photograph that conveniently explains everything and an ending that suggests that though Sheila has sent her husband away to a hotel, she might yet let him back into her life; he volunteers to mind the younger children while Alia is taken to the airport. If Malik is serious about the need to challenge the patriarchy, she might have devised an ending that celebrates the accomplishments and not just the spending habits of Indian women. It is interesting that consumerism itself isn’t challenged. While we admire Bhairavi and her husband, their life as shown in Malik’s film is a little dull. Malik could have written and directed a film that showcases the lead, but the film defers to the mother-daughter relationship instead. In the final image, Alia stares at the five women with shaven heads who have become her inspiration to protest against everything that is wrong in Trump’s America. Only of course, the President isn’t mentioned. Never mind the cause, it’s a bake sale.
Reviewed at Cineworld Ashford (Kent, Southeast England), Screen Ten, Saturday 3 December 2022, 13:00 screening
