Shadows and Lights

The auditorium lights in Shanmukhanand Hall felt blinding as I walked up to the stage when the anchor announced, "Maharashtra State Award for Best Director-Documentary goes to Falguni Prabhudesai". I had put my complete energy in this film on migrant workers in Hadapsar, and the applause echoed like a tide crashing against the walls. I smiled, but inside my chest there was a storm of gratitude, disbelief, and a quiet ache. Is this the moment he will finally look at me not just as his daughter, but as an artist? I thought as I looked at my father, the greatest film director this state produced - Lalit Prabhudesai, sitting in the front row, his face unreadable as always.

But it was not always like this...

I often think of my childhood as a long corridor in our huge bungalow on Prabhat Road, lined with doors that never opened. Behind each door was my father, immersed in his films, his scripts, his endless discussions with colleagues. By the time I was born he was already forty, a man with a reputation in Marathi film world for his uncompromising realism. To the world he was a visionary. To me, he was a locked room.

My mother was the one who kept the house breathing. She had been a professor and had the patience of someone who knew silence could be a form of love. She often told me, “Your father speaks through films, not words. You must learn to read him differently.”

But I was a child who wanted words, not metaphors and the huge age gap between us made it that much difficult. I wanted him to ask about my drawings, my school debates, my fears of being invisible. And in those moments of longing, I would imagine conversations that never happened… his voice praising the crooked lines of my sketches, his laughter echoing in the school auditorium when I stumbled through a debate. Instead, silence filled the spaces where words should have been, and I began to believe that perhaps I was invisible not just to him, but to the world. My heart carried the ache of unanswered questions, like unopened letters gathering dust.

I remember the smell of old reels stacked in his study, the way his colleagues would drop by late at night, discussing scripts over endless cups of tea. I would sit on the staircase, listening, watching them, trying to decode the language of adults who spoke of “frames,” “narratives,” and “truth.” I wondered why truth seemed more important to my father than my birthday parties or my school plays. And if truth was everything, does that mean my joy, my laughter, my small victories were never real enough for him to notice? I never expressed my thoughts to him or even Aai. My loneliness taught me star gazing. The stars and planets millions of miles away became my friends as I would peer in the old telescope at the sky every night.

By the time I entered my teens, the distance between us had grown into a canyon. He was in his mid-fifties now, his hair streaked with silver, his eyes carrying the weight of stories untold. I was restless, sharp, and resentful. I would walk alone down Jangli Maharaj Road, watching couples laugh over ice cream at Naturals, and think: Why can’t my father laugh with me like that? Why does he only smile when a scene comes together on screen?

It wasn’t just absence. It was the way he seemed to belong more to others than to us. His films were screened at NFAI, his lectures at FTII were packed, and young filmmakers sought his approval like pilgrims seeking blessings. I felt like a stranger in my own home, competing with an entire city for his attention.

At twenty, I decided to rebel—not by rejecting cinema, but by embracing it. I thought, if I could master the language of frames and shadows, maybe I could finally speak to him in the only tongue he understood. My rebellion was not fire but reflection; I wanted to hold up a mirror to him, to show him that his daughter was not a stranger but a storyteller too. I believed that if I walked into his world, I might force him to walk into mine.

Aai encouraged me and I enrolled at FTII, determined to carve my own path. At FTII, however, the world was not kind. I was trolled by classmates, and some teachers dismissed me as another “nepo kid” who had inherited privilege rather than talent. They whispered that my seat was bought by my surname, not my skill. I had overheard one professor sneering during a critique, “She’s Prabhudesai’s daughter, right? Let’s see if she can survive without his shadow.” Their words cut deeper than silence, because they carried the sting of accusation. I felt like a trespasser in a place I had earned, yet was told I did not deserve. I carried my insecurities like hidden scars. Every time I picked up the camera, I wondered if I was imitating him or defying him. My first short film, shot in the narrow lanes of Kasba Peth, was about a girl who waits endlessly for her father to return home. It was raw, unpolished, but deeply personal.

When Baba watched it, all he said was “Good”, followed by silence. That’s all, nothing more.

His silence was heavier than any critique. That night, I sat on the terrace, staring at the sky dotted with the familiar stars, I whispered to myself, “Why can’t he just say he’s proud? Why does every word have to be hidden in silence?” My tears felt like monsoon rain, sudden, drenching, unstoppable. I felt so helpless for trying so hard to get his attention.

The years that followed were a tug-of-war between us. I made films that were more experimental, more emotional, while he continued his austere realism. At twenty-four, I shot a documentary about the women vendors at Mandai, their resilience and humor. I showed it to him. After watching, he asked to rewind and saw it again. 

Then without taking his eyes off the screen, he finally spoke: “You see people differently than I do. You see their laughter. I see their struggle.”

I looked at him, startled. “And why can’t you see both?” I asked, my voice trembling. 

He sighed, his face lined with exhaustion. “Because I lived through years when laughter was a luxury. The seventies, the protests, the violence… I carry those shadows.”

I pressed on, my voice breaking. “But Baba, don’t you see? If you only show the shadows, people forget that light exists. Isn’t cinema supposed to remind us of both?”

He shook his head slowly. “Light can blind as much as it can heal. I feared that if I showed too much joy, it would feel dishonest, like betraying the pain I witnessed.”

I clenched my fists. “But honesty isn’t only about pain. It’s about wholeness. You taught me that truth matters, but truth without laughter is only half the story.”

He turned his head and looked at me with weary eyes. “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps I was too afraid to let joy in. I thought it would make me weak.”

For the first time, I glimpsed the man behind the silence. He wasn’t just absent; he was haunted. His youth had been shaped by the turbulence of the Emergency, the protests, the censorship. He had lost friends, seen dreams crushed. His realism wasn’t just artistic—it was survival.

Two years later we had another confrontation. We were walking along the banks of the Mula-Mutha, near Bund Garden. I stopped and said, “Baba, do you know what it feels like to grow up waiting? Waiting for you to notice me, waiting for you to ask me how I am, waiting for you to be my father instead of Pune’s filmmaker?”

He looked at me, startled, as if I had broken a spell. “Falguni,” he said slowly, “I thought silence was safer. Words can wound. I didn’t want to wound you.”

I laughed bitterly. “But silence wounds too. It cuts deeper because it leaves me guessing.”

We stood there, the river carrying our words away like fragile boats. He finally whispered, “I am proud of you, Falguni. I always was. I just didn’t know how to say it.”

I stared at him, stunned. “Then why didn’t you? Why let me grow up thinking I was invisible?”

He lowered his gaze. “Because every time I tried, the words felt too small. I thought silence was safer, that you would understand it as respect.”

I shook my head, tears burning. “Respect without love feels like abandonment.”

He nodded, his voice trembling. “I see that now. Maybe I am maturing now.” He said with a half-smile. “I thought I should have spoken. I should have told you that your laughter was the light I never dared to film.”

And in the silence that followed, I heard the words he did not say aloud, but I felt them in the air between us: I was afraid of failing you. Afraid that if I spoke, you would see the cracks in me. I carried guilt for every absence, every missed moment, and I thought silence could protect you from my inadequacy. I wanted you to be stronger than me, freer than me, and I believed distance would force you to grow. But I see now that distance only built walls. And I wish I had learned sooner that love is not weakness, but the only truth worth filming.

The moment was not a miracle. It didn’t erase years of distance. But it was a crack in the wall, a shaft of light.

Now, after all these years, I see him differently. After crossing seventy he is slower, but more reflective. He watches my films with quiet intensity, sometimes offering a single sentence that feels like a gift. “You have found your own rhythm,” he told me after my latest film about the migrant Bihari workers in Hadapsar.

That night lying in the bed, I realized then that our story was not about perfect reconciliation. It was about learning to live with the spaces between us, the silences that could now be filled with understanding instead of resentment.

I often walk through Pune through the crowded by-lanes off Laxmi Road, the quiet gardens of Sambhaji Park, the bustling cafés of Koregaon Park—and I think of him. The city that once felt like my rival now feels like our shared canvas. His realism and my emotionality seem like two sides of the same coin, two ways of telling the story of a city, a family, a bond.

Sometimes, when I sit at Hanuman tekdi looking at the city, I imagine my father as a banyan tree. His roots are deep, tangled in history, in pain, in discipline. I am a bird that perches on his branches, restless, wanting to fly, but still nourished by the shade he provides. We are not the same, we are very different… but we are inseparable.