#Piku: Death, like shit, is inevitable

Few films and books celebrate death, in all its inevitability.

Piku does, brilliantly.

Two things are for sure - death and shit, says Amitabh Bachchan's character, the always complaining Bhaskor Banerjee, who lives in Delhi's Chittaranjan Park with his beautiful architect daughter Piku, who is "financially and sexually independent" (her father's words when introducing her to a potential suitor).

Bhaskor Banerjee is obsessed with shit - he suffers from constipation, and spends all his day talking about the shape, size and frequency of his bowel movements. But he is also obsessed with dying with dignity, the idea of a happy death. When Irrfan Khan's character talks of the surgery his father had to undergo, he shows an unnatural interest in the details and then is shocked to hear that he was put on ventilator. "Do you know how painful that is,"' he says. "They stick needles into you. I don't like unnatural deaths." It's not the way he wants to go, he tells his daughter, who manages the house with an old retainer, her career, and her "need-based" "physical" relationships.

Bhaskor Banerjee believes that it is quite rational for his daughter to take care of him, as she would a child, as he and his wife looked after Piku when she was a child. Which is the other wonderful thing about Piku - it celebrates the daughter's role as the primary caregiver and the true worth of marriage. Bhaskor Banerjee believes a woman should be financially and sexually liberated, and marry only when she wants to. There should be shaadi with a purpose. Anything else - such as sublimating her own self to the altar of her husband's achievements - is what he calls a low IQ decision. Only a woman scriptwriter, Juhi Chaturvedi, could have come up with the understanding a woman with ageing parents feels. The anxiety of wanting to balance your personal happiness with their increasing demands.

How do you deal with mortality in a society which worships youth - Atul Gawande's Being Mortal writes about the pain of that beautifully through Gawande's own father's case as well. Piku walks the same road, with a lightness of spirit and an impressive emotional quotient. Bhaskor Banerjee may be annoying, but he is right - parties are designed to get drunk at, doctors are meant to be consulted at every step, daughters are meant to be apprised of every bowel movement, and maids are meant to be frisked for thievery of phenyl.

Life is meant to be lived. And death is meant to be instant, painless, satisfying.

Just like, well, shit.