An amateur attempt

How will you define the movie? Movie, if you exclude the list of super natural, sci-fi ones, is depiction of real life with fictional characters that moves before you as a real life story as if everything is squeezed within a limited time-frame  For that time period, you suddenly become secondary and someone else takes your place to become primary to show his life – bad or good, left to you to decide. You watch the movie in one go, without taking breaks and mostly once. It suddenly transmits you in a different world that might be completely alien for that period. You laugh, you cry, you frustrate, you anger – all the feelings within few hours of time span that you otherwise would have felt them in your entire life. Certainly, it is one of the wonderful inventions of mankind.

After such a long time I watched a movie in a theater and the first one in the UK – interestingly, a Hindi one – Aakrosh. It was nice to see Priyadarshan taking a break from his routine comedy viands and moving into serious cinema. How can one forget that he had proved his dexterity on serious concepts with movies like Gardish, Virasat, Kala Paani and his National Award winner, Kanjeevaram? This one also is of same genre. It made me learn the word ‘Honour Killing’. And, after the movie I wondered whether it meant ‘killing for honour’ or ‘killing of honour’. Aakrosh is one of the movies that exerted a force on my emotion and almost made me cry.

The movie starts with a scenic view of Celebration of Dussehra in which the effigies of Rawana and his family are burn to ashes with fireworks, showing conquest of good over evil, followed by chaos created by Delhi college students for three missing students, Vinu and his friends, since 2 months then entry of two main characters, A Major and a CBI officer, who are given the charge of investigation. Then the movie goes on for further revelation and broadens itself to bigger perspective than missing boys. The story reveals one of sad love stories which moves toward tragic end. The hollow esteem tries to endure by all brutal means; in the end, virtue triumphs, but after losing everything. I leave rest of the story for you to watch, explore and feel, otherwise you would curse me for spoiling your entertainment.

This movie is more than a movie to me. My last three blogs are related to issues related to this. But, my blog may not quiver you from inside, but this movie can. It made me remember incidents that took place in the name of faith and honour.  For example, while watching the brutal genocide scene, I remembered Bathe massacre in 1997 that swept away a whole Dalit village within few hours. Besides, its cinematic synchronizations which give you a nice roller coaster ride of impotence, anger and vengeance. Vinu’s friends being of upper caste and killed by their own men by caste shows everything comes after human’s greed. Bipasa is bruised by her husband, unabashedly corrupt cop Paresh Rawal, who in turn is beaten for revenge by Ajay Devgn. Even the last scene was quite touchy, when devastated mother and wife took final step of killing everyone involved. There are many more. Although, there are some flaws e.g. a CBI officer with very high authority, is made mockery by local policemen and vicious gang lords, reporters are beaten before the heroes, but they did nothing and waited for appropriate moment, this movie is worth watching.

Now, you must be wondering why the subject line is ‘AAA' or 'An Amateur Attempt’. This meant my attempt of providing a review not Pridarshan’s attempt of making it. He can never be an amateur as long as movies are concerned. This is my attempt to move on from amateurism to purism. Your comment are always invited as, for me, they value more than my blogs.

Ayodhya: An eye opener to every Indian

In last 6 months, I have read almost 6-7 books on India. Before reading the book, I flipped the pages of preface in curiosity to know what provoked the writers that they put their vital time and energy to write about India. Some referred its growth in last 20 years and its claim of becoming super power in next 20 years, while some mentioned its diverse culture and rich history. While going through the book, I realized that their claim of their books were paeans of Indian achievements and valued culture vanished after every one or two pages. They moved towards the genuine topic they see in our everyday life. For them, one of the hot topics was Ayodhya. They could not resist themselves from discussing about RSS, VHP, BJP, Lord Rama, Babri Masjid and many topics associated to it. Yesterday, Verdict came out after 18 years of long wait that usually happens in Indian court. But this time, It was good for everyone as in last 18 years many would have moved much ahead for some important necessity of life than sticking to it for justice. Many of them, who have firm belief in what should have been the verdict, don't know what their justification is.

I am neither a journalist nor a historian, who can provide you minute details of what happened in last 2000 years, so that I can conclude whom the disputed land belongs to - Hindus or Muslims or both. But, I can say for sure, 1992's Babri Masjid demolition was a sign of pure cowardice to achieve greedy political edge. Whatever happened was a sharp blow on the face of secularism, in which India believed. Many claimed their favors by strongly stating that it was a process of restoration of one of the Hindus' most sacred places by wracking and ruining 550 year old monument. These people did not even know if Lord Ram ever existed on earth or he is just an art of fiction whose legacy was old and strong enough to disguise anyone. Even though, if suppose Ram took avatar, quite long before, what was the point of destruction? A religion never expects us to do something of this kind. A religion never asks us to attack on others' belief or take revenge.

When I was in second year, I was told by one of my seniors about ragging. He told me if I wanted to control our juniors and instill fear inside them then I should find the weakest link. In other words, remedy was to find out a shy, introvert and scared guy and slap him hard in front of his other batch mates. 99% were the chances that I could control them for entire ragging period without any fuss. Those words made me remember how I had been hit first time in front of all. I had to swallow that humiliation without any resistance as I had not had enough confidence and courage to oppose. Though it was just a part of college ritual and it ended after sometime, but when I see this scenario in context of what happened in Ayodhya, I feel the situation of minorities was as good or bad as first year juniors. If Hindus has been in minority in this country, I suspect that anyone would have thought of restoring Ram in this way.

We can't go into the past and change it, but definitely we can change the flow of future by doing good in our present. This is a time of realization that digging old cemeteries will give us rotten dead bodies, nothing else. There are many creative and positive things to do, then why to waste time in such fights. I wish there would not be any more Ayodhya anywhere. It is a wakeup call not only for Indians, but also for every human being.