Doob: No Mattress Of Roses – A take a look at the infidelity plagued lifetime of the creative genius

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A much-explored trope in literature and cinema was the infidelity-riddled life of the artistic genius. Whether life invades culture or vice versa, the condition of being the male artistic genius justifies marital or romantic infidelity. From Picasso to Eliot, culture has normalized the use of women as artistic vessels, with “muse” being the popular term for channeling the artist’s creative powers. Film and literature from Joyce to Felini have employed several women who act as much-needed muses for the artist to realize the process of self-realization. That a male creative genius cannot do without a few affairs here and there or dozens in a row, out of wedlock or unmarried, has been normalized as a phenomenon.

Doob: No Bed Of Roses, published in 2017, also deals with the same trope and examines it from the perspective of the male genius, albeit from the perspective of a different emotional world. Here the artist’s infidelity is the battlefield between longing and melancholy, no need for creative development. Irrfan Khan plays the role of Javed Hasan in Doob: No Bed Of Roses, a famous and acclaimed director who is also an extremely loving father of two and a once passionate husband. Javed’s name will soon appear in the media in connection with a rumored affair with his daughter’s boyfriend and heroine for his next film, Nitu. Javed soon divorces his wife in order to marry Nitu and start a family with her, incurring bitter hatred and resentment from his wife and children. It is this choice of Javed that causes his steady descent into such grief that he brings about his death.

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Doob: No Bed Of Roses portrays the subject in a very interesting way as it remains unknown all the time what exactly was the emotion that linked Javed and Nitus’ socially abnormal relationship. From the start of the scandal and the spread of news of his alleged affair, Javed is irritated and angry, perceiving the whole matter as a lie and an attempted assassination. He convinces his wife again and again of his perspective until the fighting between them becomes so bitter that they move to separate houses.

The only scene in Doob: No Bed Of Roses that shows any attraction Javed might have towards Nitu is when, on one of Javed’s turbulent nights of family problems and tension, Nitu secretly visits him at night and stubbornly smokes a window sill A cigarette when Javed initially offers her a wall of resistance. Javed soon joins them and the two of them puff on the same cigarette most of the night. Javed’s need for his daughter’s boyfriend is palpable but not explicit, as is the fact that his marriage or love for his former wife has dried up. However, the two get divorced and Javed moves into his new home with his new wife.

A scene from Doob: No Bed Of Roses. Image source: Filmbegleiter

Mustofa Sarwar Farooki’s handling of Javed’s predicament in Doob: No Bed Of Roses deserves applause. Javed is torn between the desire and inherent masculine propensity to seek adventure outside, and the comfort and certainty of the ordained and legitimized social relational structure. Javed’s dilemma is a very manly one indeed: where men always prefer the exterior to the home. Javed tries to control his cravings at an age when he already has ties of deeper and more secure relationships and faces an inevitable enemy; Mourning in Doob: No rose bed.

Javed’s ex-wife Maya gets less screen space compared to him, but it is her mental power that shines during the screen time devoted to her. Javed’s grief, confusion, and loss are ubiquitous and uncontrollable. Maya is the woman rooted in the generational trauma of her gender in order to cope with disloyal, inattentive, bondless husbands. Or those who quickly lose interest or easily find a replacement. It taught them to invest with all their being in their home. It has also taught them to move quickly when this home plays the part of the traitor, as it very often does. Therefore, it dissolves quickly. To wade quickly through an initially catastrophic storm. In Doob: No Bed Of Roses, she quickly anchors herself in life. This is where Javed fails. His choice of the strange bait of desire and his distance from the pillow of norm and structure detail him and plunge him into an unfathomable sea of ​​melancholy.

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Javed will soon die. However, he has never regretted his choice. He was never disrespectful to his new young wife. However, he could never get over the sadness his children caused when they avoided him for life. Perhaps the most intense scene from Doob: No Bed Of Roses is when Maya receives news of Javed’s death. It doesn’t scream, scream, respond, and receive messages the way you would get information about groceries or laundries. She is not sad. In fact, she feels free to think of her dead husband as part of herself, since no one has his mortal form anymore.

Death gives Javed back his lost dignity, his lost worth for the people who mattered most to him, his former family, his daughter and his son.

In a lens, Doob: No Bed Of Roses is a nice rendition of how social choices are gendered fairly often and fairly invisibly. And how the power of the spirit owes more to the cause of femininity. While watching the movie, you’re not angry with Javed, but you are definitely angry with everything that’s happening. The motivation for nitus decisions is deepened flat in the places where the film is disadvantaged. It is easily suggested that all Nitu ever wanted was an all-embracing father figure, as she saw her friend (Javed’s daughter) grow up under the cover of her childhood from childhood. All she wants is shelter and the only one she’s been obsessed with since childhood. The director could have put a more empathetic screen over this character, however.

The film’s focus remains on Javed and his fragility and confusion. Stick to his omnipresent grief. Stick to his weakness to pursue his decisions. Hold on to his strength to pursue his decisions. At the end of Doob: No Bed Of Roses, you can’t help but feel as helpless as the protagonist in the invisible chains of instincts and impulses that keep us who we are. And perhaps in this way the director shows the humanity of the sexual separation of all life and the helplessness that goes with it without its realization.

Recommended image source: MyNation