We live in a time when Gen-Z has a word for nameless relationships that survive in the grey area between friendship and romance. The ‘situationship’, as they say, is a transition phase before a couple gets to define who they are to each other and upon recently re-watching the 1979 film Baton Baton Mein, I found it extremely interesting that while the term ‘situationship’ might be recent, this grey area of relationships existed even 43 years ago.
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Basu Chatteree’s Baton Baton Mein is the story of Nancy (Tina Ambani) and Tony (Amol Palekar) who meet each other on their daily commute on a local train. Tony pursues her just enough so Nancy lets her guard down and thus, begins their journey. As they start hanging out, we see a beautiful montage of them spending time at different coffee shops, by the beach, at the movies, with the lyrics ‘baton baton mein pyaar ho jayega (they’ll fall in love just like that)’. To those around them, it is obvious that they are together and in love. Nancy’s mother can’t help herself but bring up the topic of their marriage every time she sees Tony but the couple insists, to each other and to us, that they just met and haven’t decided what the relationship truly is.
Basu Chatterjee’s 1979 film Baton Baton Mein starred Amol Palekar and Tina Ambani.
Even when it is evident that Nancy and Tony are treating each other like partners, they can’t get themselves to say they belong together. Nancy is afraid of getting her heart broken again and Tony is scared that his mother would interfere in this aspect of his life as well, as she does with everything else. In a really awkward yet funny scene, when Nancy’s friend is visiting and meets Tony for the first time, Nancy acts like she doesn’t care if she hits on him. She puts it bluntly, “He’s not mine and if he chooses to flirt with her, let him.” Yet, the jealousy is obvious. They even have a fight about how Tony was excessively nice to the friend. Watching their relationship struggle to get past the ‘Will they? Won’t they?’ phase is adorable as they put forth an ‘I don’t care’ façade but are secretly so in love that they can’t imagine to get past one day without seeing each other.
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The film is set in the 1970s but the complicated nature of romantic relationships it tries to portray makes it obvious that we might have words tp categorise such a relationship but the status overall, is pretty much the same. While Tony and Nancy are still figuring things out amongst themselves, the world won’t let them be as it demands for them to explicitly label their relationship, and in this case, it’s by marriage.
The relationship starts getting messy after others start questioning them about it.
Tony and Nancy also come to the realisation that since they don’t have a label to their relationship, they can’t really have much expectations from each other, which makes their situation even more precarious. The subtle handling by Basu Chatterjee of their complicated relationship is adorable, yet mature but the filmmaker’s choice of either marriage, or a break-up starts feeling like it is an ultimatum, which doesn’t really match the tone of the rest of the film.
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In the 1970s, Amol Palekar was the poster boy of the relatable boy-next-door and he starred in many relationship dramas like – Rajnigandha, Chhoti Si Baat, Chitchor, Gharaonda. Baton Baton Mein is probably the most relatable out of all of these films and feels familiar even in 2022.
