Hearts Still Care

I watched Sabar Bonda at its 4:20 show at PVR Andheri — an experience that turned out to be more than just cinema, but a mirror. What most gay men go through, irrespective of class. A simple thing like a parent being worried about the future of his gay son. 

It began with death. A father passes away, and rituals immediately take over: what to wear, what to eat, how to mourn, what to suppress. That opening sequence pierced me deeply because my bua — whose birthday coincidentally fell on the day of my viewing — was like a father to me. The grief, the weight of conduct, and the demands of tradition all struck a profoundly personal chord.

What makes Sabar Bonda so powerful is that the protest it mounts is whisper-quiet. It doesn’t erupt in melodrama; it lingers in what society insists upon — in colour, rules, and ritual. A grey shirt Anand is told to change. Much like how people ask us to change, to convert. The slippers he wears – bringing comfort to his feet – but only in the company of his lover, because ritual forbids it. The shadows of who he is, pressed against the mould of what he’s “supposed” to be. The film reveals itself in the texture of small moments: Balya’s gift of cactus pears, the shared silences, the tension between city and village, heartbreak and love, grief and continuity.

Anand’s mother is the film’s moral and emotional backbone. She loves, supports, and resists in her own way. His father’s eventual acceptance, Balya’s steady care, and the hesitancy threaded through each character are rendered human. There is no villain here — only systems and traditions, and people trying to navigate them quietly.

Critics have largely echoed these impressions. Moneycontrol calls it “a gentle story of grief, memory, and love told with quiet honesty. It lingers in the silences and small moments …” Times of India writes: “to enjoy the sweet taste of cactus pears, you must first carefully remove the sharp spines from the skin of the fruit … meant to be savoured exactly like that.” That metaphor mirrors the story’s truth — love, identity, and acceptance are like a fruit you crave, but you must first tend to the pain. Indian Express highlights the film’s visual poetics: the still camera, wide frames, and static gaze that holds ritual, grief, and distance until intimacy seeps in. Hindustan Times calls it “a tender, deeply moving study of queer love in one of the year’s best films,” noting how customs, everyday pressures, and quiet longing are handled with exquisite precision.

Where my own experience diverges is in how deeply the symbols resonated. The cactus pear, unlike the peach in Call Me By Your Name, isn’t about erotic awareness, but about care, concern, and tenderness — love that is rare, difficult to find, but sustaining. The rituals aren’t simply a backdrop; they are choreography, dictating what must and must not be done. Anand’s protest is not loud — it is embodied in small refusals, in gifts, in a silent embrace.

Long after leaving the theatre, certain truths lingered. Rituals and rules aren’t just external constraints; they are the inner architecture Anand must resist and reshape. The sensory texture — touch, clothing, light, the sound of goats, footsteps, and fields — builds an emotional world as vivid as any dialogue. There is the courage of saying no to what one is “meant” to be, and yes to a hidden version of self. And there is the way family, particularly the mother, becomes both an anchor of tradition and a wellspring of possibility.

Some critics have noted the film’s pace is slow. I felt that too — but its slowness isn’t a flaw. It forces us to sit with grief, longing, and ritual as the characters themselves must. It may not satisfy those expecting dramatic peaks, but its reward is in its lingering — in the way it teaches us to notice what we otherwise overlook.

The caresses are felt through the screen. The running of hands in the hair. The embrace to ward off the cold. The closeness found at last in the privacy of the city. They permeate through the screen and fall into your hands and heart. The emotion there becomes visceral and that’s what makes the movie brilliant – it’s like reading a book, you are pulled into deeper nuance and feeling.

Sabar Bonda doesn’t shout its declarations. It doesn’t need to. Instead, it builds a space where grief, yearning, and identity coexist in fragile balance, where society’s insistence collides with the quiet affirmations of love and humanity. It reminds us that love can be radical, even when soft. That rituals can suffocate as much as they anchor. That resistance doesn’t always roar — sometimes it whispers, gently, persistently, and all the more powerfully.

If I were to give it a frame, I’d say: Sabar Bonda is a film of small revolutions. It doesn’t overthrow. It loosens. And in that loosening lies its beauty — because it allows tenderness the room to breathe.