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Rohan Parashuram Kanawade (director), Sabar Bonda, 2025. 112 min.

A death has already occurred—one that, over the ten days in which Sabar Bonda unfolds, will be mourned by a woman, Suman, and our protagonist: Anand, played by Bhushaan Manoj. He is a thirty-something man emotionally stunted by the burden of caring for his ailing father. On top of this grief, he has come to terms with being gay and—since same-sex marriage remains illegal in India despite persistent advocacy from groups such as Amnesty International India—he has accepted that marriage will not be a part of his future, a reality that pesters him throughout the film like flies circling his father’s corpse.

When questions about his marriage become too insistent, Suman fabricates a story—that Anand was deeply in love with a woman who left him for another man, married him, and had a child, leaving Anand heartbroken. This is not entirely false; the only difference is that the “woman” was in fact a man—Chetan—whom we come to understand was Anand’s “special friend.” Chetan chose the conventional path—marriage, family, security—leaving Anand behind, severing their bond with an irrevocable finality.

At first, the pressure to marry seems escapable, but it soon becomes unbearable—not only for Anand but also for Bayla, a farmer and driver played by Suraaj Suman. Bayla’s own parents pressure him to accept an arranged marriage to an illiterate woman, leading to a public altercation that exposes the strain of expectation.

“I don’t feel like living anymore,” he confesses at his lowest ebb.

These men know who they are, what they want in life, and what they stand for—but cruelly, and crucially, that understanding collides with and is shaped by the reality of their circumstances: a small, impoverished village ruled by religious principles and traditional, albeit outdated, customs. The film neither ignores nor excuses the systemic forces that shape this world—the same forces that coerce men into marriages they do not desire are the very ones that have left Suman, and countless women like her, illiterate and denied the autonomy to lead independent lives.

Anand’s relationship with his mother—initially caustic—softens as grief recedes, bringing them to a juncture where they can drop their pretenses and speak around the things left unspoken. “Talk to me sometimes,” she tells him. What unfolds between them is a “coming out” of sorts, though not in the traditional sense—not about acceptance or declaration, but about prioritising oneself, disregarding “other people,” and embracing the ability to change one’s fate. Because as the child, you have been granted the privilege to be different.

^{The Marathi-language film takes place in an ancestral village that Anand has fled for Mumbai}

It is a fact universally acknowledged—yet only selectively accepted—that the rules and regulations of society as we once knew it no longer apply to all its inhabitants. Attitudes and behaviours have shifted, which is why Anand lives in the city—Mumbai—where he can, perhaps, imagine a more complete version of himself. But the fallout from his father’s death stalls his progress, placing this film in conversation with Payal Kapadia’s 2024 film All We Imagine As Light, which similarly explores city transplants envisioning alternative pathways.

“You can feel your pain with me,” his late father said to him when he was heartbroken.

After his death, it is Bayla—with his unwavering devotion and boundless affection—who offers a depressed, dispirited Anand a way out of his misery. He urges him to strip off his clothes and tentatively step into the cold lake, to kiss beneath the rustling trees, to ride a motorcycle, and to consider taking him on as a dependent. Bayla makes him realise that there is a corollary to marriage: companionship. Theirs is a relationship with a history—one that is not only capable of resurrecting itself but of deepening after all these years, giving them the opportunity to rekindle their former sparks. As the days of mourning pass, and the beautiful, clean yet striking images accumulate, the story demands a decision: will these relationships survive the recalibration, or return to as-it-was?

Where director Rohan Parashuram Kanawade, in his debut feature, truly demonstrates his style is in the moments of silence—such as when two men gaze up at the stars, speaking of dreams; or in the close-up of bushy, overgrown hair being gently massaged; or in the way two faces slowly approach each other, like magnets drawn close before snapping together; or in the soothing pleasure of resting your head in your mother’s lap after—for once—a non-confrontational conversation; or in the quiet ritual of picking up your father’s bones from the ashes while the embers still glow.

“What I was trying to do was create a portrait of that time. The quietness, the grass, the heat—all of those things were part of that experience,” he said in a Cineuropa interview. “The silences were very important because I think people experience silences in their day-to-day life.”

^{This is Bhushaan Manoj (Anand) and Suraaj Suman’s (Bayla) film debut}  

Kanawade’s poetic images—framed with rounded edges—remind us of what we seek in a film: to make us pay attention, to take our breath away, to settle our restless souls.

Despite the hustle and bustle, the toils and tribulations, these men find moments of beauty and metaphors to lose themselves in—such as the titular cactus pears. The question of their existence transforms into a gesture of love, made even more touching when Anand realises that Bayla has removed all the thorns for him. The journey that Sabar Bonda—which, deservedly, won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance International Film Festival, the first Marathi-language film to achieve this feat—charts is how Anand discovers a replacement for his father. Yet, this is not a substitute paternal figure, but a fraternal one—rooted in care, concern, and connection. Returning from his uncle’s home, to which Bayla had driven them, Anand offers him money. “I came along to spend time with you,” Bayla insists, declining it.

More than bodily fluids, what is exchanged between them is a dimension of love that pulls them out of their heads and back into their hearts—the better place to be: thornless, sweet, and beating wildly, with the sounds of Mumbai and birdsong adorning the soundscape.

How to cite: Nagendrarajah, Nirris. “An Unmarried Man: On Rohan Parashuram Kanawade’s Sabar Bonda.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 8 Feb. 2025, chajournal.blog/2025/02/08/sabar-bonda.

Nirris Nagendrarajah (he/him) is a Toronto-based writer whose work has appeared in paloma, Polyester, Fête Chinoise, In the Mood Magazine, Tamil Culture, in addition to Substack. He is currently at work on a novel about waiting. [All contributions by Nirris Nagendrarajah.]