The motion of resistance: radical autonomy and the medicalization of the mundane in Shoojit Sircar's Piku.

Abstract

This article evaluates Shoojit Sircar's Piku [1] within the geriatric medical canon, examining its subversion of traditional aging tropes that equate old age with inevitable decline, loss of autonomy, and passive dependency. Centered on the protagonist Bhashkor Banerjee's chronic constipation, the narrative explores the medicalization of the mundane, where both bowel motion and bodily movement become intertwined sites through which elderly agency is negotiated. Through a gerontological lens, the film portrays the domestic space as a site of conflict between the autonomy of the aging subject and the ethical demands of caregiving. By analyzing Bhashkor's refusal to be governed-manifested in a cross-country road trip and his reclamation of physical agency via a bicycle ride in Kolkata-this study identifies a shift from the conventional senescence-as-loss narrative. It argues that Piku reimagines ageing through the interdependence of bodily autonomy, mobility, and caregiving, offering a reimagined framework for filial maturity that privileges the elderly subject's right to pleasure, agency, and negotiated care over clinical safety.