WATER : Reflections of Reality

Chuyia's Father: [to young Chuyia] Child. Do you remember getting married? Your husband is dead. You're a widow now.



A woman trying to keep her faith and understand it. Another trying to discover a sense of self-worth by her faith in love and renewal. A man looking for a change in an orthodox world of stagnation.
The orthodoxy/theocratic theme is brilliantly and ironically juxtaposed in a continuing images of serene water of the Ganges. Water is the main character of the film. Water falling down from the skies on water down below. Water that falls down on Narayan as he is crossing the streets looking for Kalyani. Water, that young Chuiya goes to get for the dying widow, only to meet Narayan(life). The inmates of the ashram spend all their lives in the pursuit of God, yet they are damned to the neglect of an otherwise rising patriarchal society, in wake of the freedom struggle showing early colors of success. Strong element of dignity in characters that cold look asking for pity, if not handled deftly. The first shot of the lotus in the pond sets the mood straight.

Images from India, picture perfect postcard India, water as a character, rain, the Ganges, damnation, life long curse, “she will go to heaven on eating the laddoo…., and god willing will be reborn as a man…..”
Compelling sequences – the last scene at the railway station, the old lady eating the laddoo, the conversation between narayan and his friend, young Chuiya’s fearless rejection of the compulsions, “don’t let your shadow cast near us”, the old priest and his faith in faith- - bird in the cage …contradictory to expectations …self imposed prison……Gandhi…Antaratma vs. religion….”why do they send us here?...where do widowers go? Is there an ashram for them too? Shakuntala’s waking up everyone towards the end, is metaphorical of the sleeping society.


Naina neer bahaye
A lone head bends down on the floor in an empty room, against an invisible god. What is the future, what is the past? This moment too does not matter now; it will not matter in the times to come too. Still I rejoice and dance in the hope of meeting my beloved in some other world. Tears trickle down my face, still I smile. Why do I smile? Water that rubs against these stones on the bank, flowing down centuries of pain, looks pale against my tears. They seem to weigh everything on a balance of truth. Truth does not concern me anymore. I would rather be lying.
The bowl of poison that Meera drank and found her lord, did not work for me. Who would I get if I drink it? My lord seems to have left this empty room ages ago. The water must have taken him too, to greener shores. Love, they say, is like the water of holy Ganges, it makes poison turn into an elixir of life. They say I do not deserve to live too.
Love is Lord’s flute; love is Radha’s lover. This is the brook of the seven notes, keeps gushing down like tears down my face.

Piya Ho
In pursuit of my lover, I leave the shore.
In the blue moonlit night, I leave the shore.
In the waning light from the holy candles, I keep my hope alive, and leave the shore.
I wear white, and it sums up my faith.
For the millions who have left before me, and the millions who will live by this faith, I leave the shore.
My hope walks with me, and with you my heartfelt beloved and cohort, I leave the shore.
On this road of hope, you are my unwilling companion,
And in your devotion, I leave the shore.

Oh, nightingale! Tell me which way I should seek.
Oh, peacock! Wouldn’t you chant one more time what they say you always chant.

Does the one, for whom I slowly burn, know my pain?
Does the one, for whom I leave the bank, know my pain?

I hear things that were never meant to be said.
I hear songs that no one sang.

In the blue moonlit night, I see two eyes.
Eyes that say the unsaid to me, eyes that echo the blue of the moon.

Eyes that see a familiar face, the face that looked like mine.
A face that shines in the dark.

I don’t see those eyes any more.
All I can see is the unending nothingness.

And yet wishing I see my face again, I leave the shore.

Bangri Marori
Krishna, the lord, has the crown adorning his head.
And Radha has a thread around her neck.

I am incomplete without Krishna.
Krishna’s might does not need my longing.

Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me

Political ideology is something I can identify with a little more than I did before. That does not mean that I have been adopted by some former Education Minister, but just that I can see things a little clearer. What remained a far-off phenomenon for me brushed past me and pulled me in without a warning. Going by an ideology or an idea of a polity is one thing and taking a stance that is chiseled by strange occurrences, more like a cosmic phenomena, is another.
Few things that brought about this change of sorts could be my recent episodes of public embarrassment. I was stopped one night on the way home, and forced to testify being a drunkard amidst a bevy of cops who looked more like alien to me. They could have said the same about me. It looked like a scene straight out of Crash. And I, for some unimaginable reasons, was haggling with the merciless bearers of the law and legal code of conduct in an offensively aggressive tone. I had no fear, which reaffirmed their once scrawny suspicion of me being drunk to my wits. It went on, and I started enjoying the whole chemistry between me, the hauntingly empty city street, the men in khaki and the commoners in red, blues and yellows, looking paler in comparison to the bitingly gaudy color of authority. As the night went on, it brought along few more surprises in terms of my brushes with disrespect, disgust and embarrassment.
As I would have liked to believe, it should have been over with the night. But my misfortune continued the following week. And as if it was a cosmic plan to inspire me to write or do something revolutionary, event after event kept happening-people showing me the middle finger in the middle of the street for no apparent reason whatsoever, guards of my own building taking me on and asking me my whereabouts, parking guys threatening to assault me, auto wallahs showing their machismo to scare the hell out of me, and some weird French guy driving us out of our regular freak-out-hang-out-smoke-out-make-out-break-out-fake-out spot in the most possibly condescending way. Especially in the last episode, it looked like we are visiting the land of Chocolat and Champagne and had committed some ghastly crime instead of it being the other way round; excuse the ‘crime’ bit.
I had enough of all this, so came home and did my much practiced and revered intellectualization about the whole ‘big deal’ about getting raped everyday, every hour by someone or the other at the cost of your survival and apparent dignity.
Suddenly, all the exploited people in the world appeared brothers and sisters to me! Racism in the west, human trade in Africa, exploitative governments, labor laws, intellectual property, infringement of copyright, omnipresent plagiarism….like Celine Dion would have said, “it’s all coming back to me now”, or some shit like that….
Suddenly, Rang De Basanti has metamorphosed from being that cult-hit movie to an adaptation of my own life. I have become a topic of research, my angst a cultural treasure.
Frankly speaking, I do not really know if we need a revolution. I, for one, might do with one but the entire system? Probably not. And what would they do with it anyways? Tell their children they were revolutionaries? No way. It might be a personally rewarding experience to make people or authorities that stripped me apart of my self-respect, but would someone swooning over a girl in a café give a shit if I ask for a gram of sympathy? Yes. No. may be.