The visiting relation from the United States looked from the kabiraji cutlet in her hand to my mother and started to ask, “So what are you watching on Netfl...” And then just like that, mid-sentence, she turned to me and H and completed what remained of the sentence, “ix”. It was obvious it had suddenly occurred to her that a person inhabiting a certain age box would be clueless about sophisticated inventions such as OTTs, hence the timely social manoeuvre.
Now, it so happens that my mother is quite the OTT expert. At any given time her watchlist is a heady mix of historicals, crime thrillers and social dramas — Putham Pudhu Kaalai (Tamil, anthology film), Al Hayba (Syrian-Lebanese crime and family drama), The Ministry of Time (Spanish, semi-fantasy, semi-historical), Border (Japanese, story of a stoic cop), Madame Secretary (American, political drama), Carlo & Malik (Italian, crime), Knightfall (American, historical), Crown (British, historical), Broadchurch (British, crime), Miss Fisher (Australian, crime and a dash of romance), Mirzapur (Hindi, crime)...
Sometimes, in the evening, after wrapping up her day’s work, she picks up her phone and with furrowed brows and pursed lips sets sail into strange lands, now searching, now swiping, sometimes laughing out loud at Phryne’s fan dance, sometimes calling out to us either to take note of Japanese actor Shan Agori’s hairstyle or to educate us about this or that aspect of Mexican life or Korean society. She stopped to google Nicole Kidman’s bio after watching her in The Undoing and in the same breath suggested I consider wearing my lockdown curls like she does in the series. Sometimes she loses her way into her Kindle to read about Catherine de Medici after back-to-back episodes of Medici: The Magnificent. At the dinner table, we listen goggle-eyed as she points out resemblances between Vikrant, the tough cop from Anjaan: Special Crimes Unit (Hindi, horror), and Gabriel, the chef in Emily in Paris (American, comedy), or Phryne, the detective, and Shoko Takanashi, who plays a debarred lawyer, from the Japanese comedy Legal V. H whips out her phone and makes a note for some future lecture — “Use of intertextuality”.
Anyone curling up next to Maa in bed knows to expect sounds of violence. She does not like romances and comedies for the main course, only as seasonings. So, while she will cringe at the mention of A Virgin River (American, country romance), she loves to return to that scene from Al Hayba where the drug lord goes out dining with his wife, the same whom he had to marry under familial pressure. “What do you want from me,” he asks her, to which she leaves her chair, comes around and kisses him on the cheek, leaving the very macho man pleased but blushing. I never tire of her narration of a scene from 24 (Tamil), in which the hero uses his time-travelling device to keep his ladylove from getting drenched in the rains. Maa says, her voice all soft, “He keeps going back in time, sometimes to hand her an umbrella, sometimes to block the clouds, only to stop that first drop of rain.”
I once asked how clutching at subtitles she got the humour. “It is situational, not slapstick,” came the sharp reprimand.
In the early days, Ma would seek us out with the odd technical request. Now she is master of all seasons and switches. On the rare sedentary afternoon, she pairs her phone to the wireless speaker and listens to the song from the last episode of Lucifer (American, fantasy) ad nauseum — My love, my love/My fearless love/I will not say goodbyeee. Depending on her mood she could also be playing When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs For Wings from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (American, western). Lately she’s been humming Puru puru tuk tuk. I understand it is her rendition of Oh Yen Kulfi Kuchi, a track from Putham Pudhu Kaalai.
Maa is generous with her recommendations: “Episode 15 of Anjaan is a good place to begin” or “If you must watch Legal V, begin with Episode 2”, but she is not open to any herself. She and her best friend, however, do discuss watchlists in their tri-weekly conversations. Indira mashi tells me, “I had asked her to watch Blue Blood (American, police drama) but she said the bhadralok (the protagonist played by Tom Selleck) wasn’t very good-looking.”
My father is quite another story. He came to us not long ago with the odd complaint that Netflix was not letting him watch horror shows or thrillers. Upon investigation it was revealed that for months he had binged on Richie Rich, The Worst Witch, The Bureau of Magical Things, Mathilda, Witches’ Ball, The Princess Diaries... Netflix had assumed that the user is a child.
