Bharat(2019)

Plot Summary

• In 2010, Bharat Kumar, a shopkeeper in Delhi refuses to sell his store despite lucrative offers. A developer wants to create a mall by demolishing all shops in the market. All owners have sold their shops, but Bharat is the only one holding out. He declares that he will not sell the shop till he is alive. On his 70th birthday, Bharat takes his entire family to the Attari railway station as per his tradition. There he tells his past to his grandniece.During the 1947 Partition of India, Gautam Kumar (Jackie Shroff) and his family board a train to India with thousands of refugees to save themselves from the terrible riots. Gautam is a station master in Pakistan. Bharat sees that a train going to India is full of dead bodies. Soon, the station is full of people wanting to get on the train and Muslims preparing the hack them down.In the chaos, Gautam's young son, Bharat (then 8 years old) (Salman Khan), accidentally loses his baby sister, Meher Gautam Kumar ''Gudiya'' (Tabu). Gautam stays behind to search for her, despite knowing the risk, and tells his son to take his mother Janki (Sonali Kulkarni) and two younger siblings to Bharat's aunt's grocery store. Gautam says that he will come to the store. Before letting go, Gautam has Bharat promise him that Bharat will keep the family together in his place.At the aunt's place, Jamuna (Ayesha Raza Mishra) gives them shelter, but her husband Keemat (Kumud Mishra) is not very supportive of her brother's family living with them. As a child, Bharat takes all sorts of odd jobs to support his family. He decides early that he values his respect and hence will not indulge in stealing or any other criminal activity. Bharat befriends Syed Vilayati Salim Yousuf Ataullah Khan / Vilayati and they start a life-long association. Bharat meets a roadside circus worker, Radha. They two fall in love.In 1964, as a Pre-teen, he joins The Great Russian Circus with his best friend, Vilayati (Sunil Grover), and spends several years there, becoming one of the biggest attractions of the show, and wooing Radha (Disha Patani) in the process. Bharat performs in the well of death. He leaves the circus when his brother Chaman "Chote" Gautam Kumar (Shashank Arora) hurts himself in an accident while trying to emulate him. Bharat bids a tearful goodbye to Radha. He and his friend, Vilayati, look for jobs when the country is shocked due to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's death.Meanwhile Mehek (Kashmira Irani), Bharat's sister was now of a marriageable age. There are no jobs in the country and Bharat and Vilayati spend countless hours at the employment exchange.In 1975, Bharat joins the Indian migration prompted by the discovery of oil in the Gulf region, as he hopes to earn enough to send back home for Mehek's wedding. Kumud is the only female officer at the employment office, who is looking to recruit a team for her project. Kumud is hypersensitive about making sure that her position gets its respect. Bharat impresses her by calling "Madam Sir". Other members of Bharat's team are Ranjeet (Brijendra Kala), Zalzala Singh (Gurvinder Singh Malhotra) and others.Here, he falls in love with his chief engineer Kumud Raina (Katrina Kaif) and survives a mining accident. Kumud confesses her love for him, but he tells Kumud he can't marry her, as he is afraid such a commitment will come in the way of fulfilling his father's promise and leaves Saudi Arabia after his visa expires. Back home in India, Kumud arrives during his sister Mehek's wedding to announce their love, and says she is okay with being in a relationship without marriage. Bharat's mother agrees on Bharat's wish that they can be in a live-in relationship.A few years pass and Bharat's aunt dies in 1983. During the 1983 Cricket World Cup, his now-elderly uncle, in need of money, decides to sell the imported goods store, a move Bharat disagrees with. Bharat initially refuses as he hopes to keep the promise he made to Gautam, still believing he would one day come back; however, he reluctantly agrees. He leaves India again with Vilayati to take jobs as sailors to earn enough money to buy the store from his uncle. After 8 months aboard the ship, during which Vilayati gets married to Suzan (Nora Fatehi) at Malta, and they later thwart a pirate attack, Bharat returns to India and successfully buys the store. He runs it throughout the 1990s as more changes in India take place, and life goes on.In 1995, Kumud becomes the creative director of the then-newly formed channel, Zee TV, and runs a program in which relatives separated during the Partition are reunited. Bharat is featured in hopes of finding his long-lost sister, Gudiya, and his father. A woman from London (Tabu) who was adopted as a child by a British family during the Partition comes on the program. Bharat converses with her and realizes that she is indeed Gudiya. An emotional reunion ensues and his sister travels to India to see them. Bharat's mother passes away soon after. Bharat hopes to also find his father through the show but is unsuccessful.In the present day in 2010, an elderly Bharat finally decides to sell his aunt's imported goods store, which, up to this point, he stubbornly refused to do despite the store's losing money. Before letting go on the train, Bharat's father had promised that he would come reunite with the rest of the family at the store, thus explaining why Bharat bought and held on to the store for so long.Bharat wistfully realizes that his father is probably too old now to still be alive. His father's spirit appears to him and assures Bharat that he indeed kept his promise of keeping the family together. He tells Bharat that it is time to let him go and move on, freeing Bharat of the promise and hope he has held onto all these years. Bharat breaks into tears and leaves the store, finally letting go of his father. A tearful Bharat finally decides to move on and marries Kumud.

Storyline

• 'Bharat' is a journey of a man and a nation together. At the cusp of India's birth as an independent nation, a family makes an arduous journey to freedom. However, this freedom comes at a cost. An eight-year-old boy, Bharat, makes a promise to his father that he will keep his family together no matter what--a promise that he keeps over the next 60 years of his life, despite each decade throwing a new set of challenges at him--some humorous, some thrilling, some romantic, and some life-threatening. His resilience, loyalty and a never dying spirit mirror the fundamental qualities of our nation--Bharat. Interestingly, the movie is an official adaptation of Korean film 'An Ode to My Father (2014), which depicted modern Korean history from the 1950s to the present day through the life of an ordinary man. — beingdhruvnanda During the Partition of India in 1947, a young man is separated from his father in the promise that he will protect their family and lead the household. A young boy Bharat joins the The Great Russian Circus in 1964 and further joins the Indian migration to the Gulf territory during the discovery of oil in the region during the 70's. He falls in love with the chief engineer and also leads the immigrated group of Indians to justice. Throughout his life spanning from 18 to 70 years of age, he struggles to keep his father's promise and holds the family together. — Santhosh