There is a scene towards the end of TVF Tripling’s latest season in which the three siblings, disconsolate about their parents’ separation and losing their childhood home, are sitting in the pouring rain. Just then, Pranav (Kunal Roy Kapoor), Chanchal’s (Maanvi Gagroo) husband, asks her to come in. She gets up to leave, but Chitvan (Amol Parashar) requests her to stay. A few moments later, Pranav calls her a second time, but Chitvan refuses to let go of Chanchal. Both she and Chandan (Sumeet Vyas) protest initially at Chitvan’s stubbornness but eventually, they give in, all three of them finally breaking down, helpless about things beyond their control.
Tripling’s newest season is an homage to homecomings. But instead of the siblings, season three focuses its lens on their parents. Shernaz Patel and Kumud Mishra are a joy to watch as Charu and Chinmay, the aging couple who realise after 36 years of staying together and raising a family that they want different things in life and are ready to go after them without each other.
The third season begins with the siblings finding out about their parents’ decision to separate and crashlanding at their family home in Manali. After the failure of his second book, Chandan is going through a low in his writing career. Chanchal and Pranav are struggling to maintain their fading royalty and all the court cases and disputes that come with it. And Chitvan is trying to legally claim his right to raise the infant of his ex-girlfriend, with whom he feels an inexplicable emotional connection, a bond too bizarre for anyone else around him to take seriously.
After a misfire of a second season, the third is more mature, sensitive, grounded, and unafraid. There are no punchlines, not even a road trip this time; just a picturesque trek through the hills during which the family tries to build a bridge across the two generations and finally take stock of all the water that has gurgled through over the years unchecked.
Within five episodes — all under 25 minutes — Tripling’s third season wonderfully unpacks the awkward estrangement that creeps within the closest of families as the children grow up and leave home to pursue their individual lives and the casual entitlement of the children towards their parents, expecting them to be stoic and unchanging as a photograph when they actually are fluid and free-flowing as a film. The short duration of the third season is both a boon and a bane. It makes for an incredibly comfortable watch but doesn’t give room to everyone to flourish. For instance, there isn’t much for Chandan, Chanchal, or even their mother Charu, to do this season. But Mishra and Parashar shine as the father and the youngest son. They have some of the best moments in the season and they are terrific—one as a middle-aged man trying to start a new life, the other, on the cusp of losing the one person that truly matters to him and gives meaning to his life.
I, too, am the eldest of three siblings. During the COVID-19 lockdown, all of us got to live together in my family home for the first time as adults. We are thick. Or so we thought. The first few weeks of euphoria died out sooner than any of us expected. After all, you can play ludo and cards, make dalgona coffee and banana bread, and discuss work and exes only for so long. Suddenly, it dawned upon us that we were not on a vacation. This was not even a phone call that you could not receive or just end whenever you felt like it. It was life. But we had forgotten how to live together with each other. Cracks began to show. For the first time, we saw each other for who we really were as people, minus the family filter, and how little we knew about each other’s lives and concerns. Shortcomings, failings, annoying habits, stubbornnesses—we could no longer unsee them, they were all on glorious display, and there was nowhere to run away or hide.
But the forced cohabiting did one remarkable thing — it brought us closer in a way we never could have otherwise. All of us had changed drastically since we last lived together; we had become different people, and we’d not have got to know each other as intimately as we did, had it not been for the pandemic. In this season, the Sharma siblings, too, find themselves in a crisis bigger than themselves, on that they have little control over. But in tearing them apart, it brings them together. Emotional resonance has always been Tripling’s biggest strength. This season, it holds on to it harder than it ever has, much like how a family who is on the brink of losing it all, does.
Read other pieces by Sneha Bengani here. 
