The Family Man – Things Fall Apart, the Center Cannot Hold

The Family Man – Things Fall Apart, the Center Cannot Hold

I had kind of figured out the twist that was coming at the end of the Family Man. In this hit Amazon series, Shrikant Tiwari (The Protagonist) is probably dead defending not only his country but also his family. And throughout this season of the series, he keeps realizing new things, as if he is making us see what we often choose not to see.

Watching it, my mind drifted to James Bond’s last outing – No Time to Die. And that led me to reflect upon civilization and moral arcs because when one places these two stories together, these two stories born in different cultures expose something deeper.

In Bond’s final moments, a character synonymous with indulgence, detachment, and womanizing, a misfit, chooses quite the contradictory path. He dies protecting his family. He dies with purpose. And the mother of his child quietly says to him, “She has your eyes.” A line soaked in gratitude, belonging, and the quiet dignity of knowing what a father gave up. Bond is a broken man who still manages to find redemption through acceptance and love. Now that is something to write about. The return to meaning. The return to anchor points that hold a life together.

Family Man does not have such good fortune. He walks into a darker mirror. In the line of duty, he sacrifices everything: home, identity, sanity. And perhaps dies defended by nothing. No home. No family. A wife who betrays him. A woke daughter who confuses entitlement for awareness. A son who drifts through life. Colleagues who treat loyalty as disposable. Neither his family nor his country carries even the faintest gratitude for what he gives up.

That contrast isn’t just cinematic. Its civilizational It is a commentary on the cultural drift. The quiet collapse of gratitude. The erosion of acceptance. The personalization of freedom without the weight of responsibility.

The West, after decades of individualism rotting its very core, is crawling back and slowly rediscovering the family as the primary stabilizer of society.

India, after centuries of drawing strength from its civilizational scaffolding, is running in the opposite direction. We mistake rebellion for liberation. We mistake detachment for growth. We mistake noise for identity. And Individualism for Strength of Character.

In the process, we lose something fundamental. Security. Pride. A sense of belonging. The grounding that makes a human being more than just a consumer of emotions and impulses. And we call that Freedom or coming of age.

Maybe the tragedy is not that Shrikant Tiwari is perhaps dead. Maybe the tragedy is that his death reveals what we have already killed within ourselves.

Image Credit to “Amazon” and “The Family Man” Series.