The movie starts with a peek in the happy married life of an upper-class couple and their children and contrasts it with the tragedy in the life an 8-year old boy who's mother passes away and he is taken into the care of a very old man also in his last stages of life. The story unfolds with the discovery of the complex and taboo relationship between this illegitimate son and the father and the resulting tension in the family. The focus of the movie is the emotions of an 8-year old who is innocent of the mistake committed by his father and how they and the family deal with it. The filmmaker Shekhar Kapur did best at sensitising how people look down upon forbidden relations and people who engage in it through the difficulty of the couple to come to terms with what happened in the past. The only sore point is that the movie's tone is entirely sympathetic towards the husband making the wife sometimes look completely unreasonable for almost the whole movie.

I had watched this movie a long time ago but the impact is still fresh in my mind. It has some very memorable names like Naseeruddin Shah(husband), Shabana Azmi(wife), Urmila and Jugal Hansraj(kids) in it but watching it you realise why they became so well known for their acting. Both Mr. Shah and Ms Azmi are accurate in their respective portrayals of a loving couple who are torn between the broken sanctity of marriage and their responsibility as a father and mother. Also the kids surely win over the heart through their picture perfect expressions. The eyes of Jugal Hansraj really bring out the innocence and need of a forgone child to be loved so very well that no true father would ever want to let go of their child after watching this.

Watching this makes me introspect and analyze my own level of innocence or the lack of it and I realise that although we're never going to get it back we could at least protect it in the eyes of our children.