By Rohan Murti

Director: Karan Shetty

‘Cuddly’ is a sweet little chatty tale that drives us down memory aisle — a simple story that reiterates the power of maternal love. It pivots around a unique, casual mother-daughter conversation that ends up teaching us more than it perhaps intends to.

Marathi actress Neena Kulkarni plays the overly concerned, quintessential yet unfathomable Indian mother who still worries about her over-worked daughter. How does she worry? By urging her daughter to fall back on ‘ghar ka khaana,’ of course. This short film’s classical depiction of how today’s technologically naive mothers react to high-tech gadgetry is endearing and priceless. Shruti Vyas essays the role of a young marketing graduate, scatterbrained and grappling with the modern-day stress that accompanies her official engagements. An example: the mother dismisses her plush bassinet as a ‘Jhoola’; a typically Indian habituation, probably just our parents’ own way of simplistically comprehending our generation’s tech-obsession.

When the daughter throws tantrums about eating home-made food claiming to have had her dinner elsewhere, the mother has the last word: “Khana toh padega“. Owing to her tone’s cadence, the mother perfectly blends authoritativeness with subtlety and of course, like each one of us, the daughter gives in. As the daughter grumpily munches on a paratha-roll, the mother’s face wears a crescent smile of satisfaction. We’ve seen that smile, in many forms and moods, over the years. 

Another very relatable motherly-aspect portrayed in the film is her unconditional willingness to help the child with almost anything that might ease her/his burden. Irrespective of her competence, the mother volunteers to help her daughter prepare for her presentation, just like viva preparations in school. Oblivious to her daughter’s sceptical look on hearing her proposal, the mother intently listens to her child and points out the mistakes.

The end of the film is appropriately ironical. The daughter rests her head on her mother’s lap, delineating on the advantages of ‘Cuddly’ the bassinet, the product she has to present the next day in office. ‘Cuddly’, she claims, has 40 different lullabies for the child to choose from and assumes the shape of the child’s head when it sleeps in it; otherwise ludicrous details that take the mother by surprise.
The daughter eventually falls asleep on her mother’s lap, the tireless ‘Cuddly’ some fortunate people are gifted with.