After Rahul Dholakia’s Parzania, Firaaq by debutant director Nandita Das is the second film set against the Gujarat riots of 2002 that I have enjoyed watching. The film documents fear. Fear is a very strong emotion. Firaaq exploits the same in the minds of the viewer brilliantly. Because it portrays fear with a deft hand. It is a grim reminder of the horrors that were visited upon a community during the bloodbath that followed the burning of the Sabarmati Express at Godhra. It relives the pain and humiliation that the Muslims faced in the aftermath of the pogrom and follows several tracks to trace the lives of people, destroyed by the riots. The one story that sets the theme of the film is that of Muneera, a henna artist and Hanif, an auto-rickshaw puller who return to their broken and burnt home only to find a locket, definitely Hindu, lying among the remains. Very obviously, they start suspecting their Hindu neighbour who is Muneera’s best friend of being responsible for their state. A single scene sets the tone of the film. Both Muneera and Jyoti, her Hindu neighbour, also a henna artist are invited to the mehndi ceremony of a rich, English-speaking Gujarati family a month after the worst riots have occurred. Before they enter the house, Jyoti takes her bindi off and places it on Muneera’s forehead. The scene precludes the fear that rages in Muneera’s heart, at the time when Jyoti’s Scooty is stopped by the police, at the time when they sprint up to Jyoti’s home to escape the one-side, bigoted police force. All this while, Hanif, Muneera’s husband rages in silence and with his associates, wants justice for himself and his fate. He plots revenge against his suspected assailant.
The second powerful track belongs to the genial poet-musician Khan Sahib and his man Friday played deftly by Raghubir Yadav. Khan Saheb refuses to acknowledge that the society in his beloved city has changed forever, that no one comes to his baithaks anymore, neither the Muslims nor the Hindus except the good doctor and his little daughter. He does not understand the hatred that has pervaded the hearts and minds of people. And he does not watch television. Enconsed in his peaceful and tranquil world he is shocked to find that the dargah of Wali Gujarati has disappeared. Reality sinks in when he actually does watch television one fine day and is confronted with the severity of all what has happened. The destroyed tomb of Wali, the 19th century Sufi mystic who brought the Hindustani qawwali to India remains the starkest reminder of the Gujarat carnage.
In another part of the city lives a Gujarati couple, played by a brilliant Paresh Rawal and a silent, brooding Deepti Naval who is haunted by the screams of a Muslim woman who, fleeing a mob begged her to open the door. Prevented by her husband, a man who, along with his friend were involved in the rape of a Muslim woman during the riots, the devastated wife fails to protect her. She is filled with self-loathing at her utter failure to save the life of another human being. Hearing about the fate that many Muslims in her city succumbed to – being burnt alive – she often pours drops of scalding oil on her arms, only to remind herself that the woman she failed to protect would have been killed in this way…burnt alive. This Hindu wife brings a little Muslim boy home…in penance…to remind herself that she had been party to a brutal murder…to redeem her sins and hides him in the kitchen. All that the little Muslim boy wants is to find his family…a family that has been decimated…his father slaughtered.
Sameer and Anu are an upwardly mobile Muslim-Hindu couple. Their lives are torn apart by the riots as Sameer, a Muslim start seeing reality in the face and fears for his life and that of his wife who has taken the bold step of having married a Muslim. They decide to move to Delhi. As the truth dawns, it feels bitter and shatters all especially after a policeman, having asked him his full name advices him to go away to Pakistan. Sameer Arshad Sheikh will remain a Muslim all his life, nothing will change, even if they move away from the city they lived in and loved for most of their young lives.
Firaaq disturbs you in many different ways. One of them is the ode to fear that it sings ever so vehemently.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Gulaal: the new colour of politics
It’s been long, really long since I watched a film that appealed to not only the senses but also to the intellect. Last weekend was spent viewing two fine pieces of cinema. While one was a taut, Kafkaesque take on the politics of hinterland India, the other documented the fears of characters set in various strata of the boomtown of Gujarat—Ahmedabad a month after the bloodbath of 2002. Let me first talk about the first. Stark, dark, and dismal, the desolate landscape of mofussil India is the backdrop of one of the finest political films made in a while now. Anurag Kashyap’s Gulaal is masterful cinema. It jolts you out of your reverie, pulls you out of the comfort zone each of us build of ourselves, hands a slap across our faces and forces us to confront the hard reality, a reality that is both ridden with caste and class differences, a reality that is mottled with the perceived injustices of a few and the sense of deprivation that blankets India, a reality that whacks the daylights out of everyone of us who have never encountered the harsh truths that plague this country, once home to the brave and the mighty.
Gulaal is set against a backdrop of the dusty expanse of modern-day Rajasthan, in a fictional, ostensible town called Rajpur (pun on Jaipur intended) which houses the university. While the student body remains in the foreground throughout the film, depicting everything from brutal ragging, even of a young female lecturer, the actual protagonists of the drama are its mass of diverse characters. There is the fiery, venom-spewing Duki Bana, played efficiently by Kay Kay Menon, the archetype of the small town chieftain who has his finger on the political nerve centre of the local university, a man surrounded by guns and coveted by the attractive nautch girl, the true blue bahubali of Indian politics, the aggrieved descendent of a royal who craves the death of democracy as a concept and as a rule and aims to raise an army of young Rajputs who can avenge their present-day helplessness in the face of the loss of their royal rights; the young, bespectacled student Dileep Singh who arrives in the heat and dust of Rajpur to study law but is sucked into the dirty underbelly of deceit, murder, love and lust; Dileep’s room-mate and friend, Rananjay Singh, an older, debauched student of the university who is also the son of the local maharaja but prefers to let his lineage lie low; the maharaja’s illegitimate son, Karan who remains on the sidelines of the plot only to reveal himself in the most important of places in the narrative and his sister Kiran, an ambitious, young student who strums the guitar when not conspiring to engineer the fall of the reigning student union. These sundry characters played by Raj Singh Chaudhary, Abhimanyu Singh, Aditya Shrivastava, and Ayesha Mohan are crucial to the narrative.
Kashyap’s film is a gritty portrayal of power politics. While there is the tavern turned living quarters bordering the railway line, home to Dileep and Rananjay on the one hand, there is the den of debauchery, called laka on the other. Enveloping all of it in its vice-grip is the grinding but façade of one-upmanship and that golden rule of real politik—the zero-sum game; power corrupts, yet it is coveted by one and all. That is the thrust of Gulaal. And that is what the film is about. It pits bigotry against legitimacy and power against humanity. The result is a classy political drama with the scenario in the present polity making it even more interesting. Student politics and elections are used by Duki Bana to fuel his own ambition of creating an MNS-style army of Rajputana warriors whom he addresses with aplomb, each one of those present have their faces coloured red with Gulaal. He convinces Rananjay Singh or Ransa to avenge those who ragged him and his friend in the hostel room, to contest against Kiran who is shattered when she ultimately loses the election to Dileep. In the meantime, Ransa has been killed by his half-brother Karan and his bullet-riddled, gulaal splattered body is hung from the post in the middle of the busy city centre to cock a snook at who else, but Duki Bana. Reason? Karan wants the tag of senapati, the leader of the Rajput clan, the ‘legitimate’ leader of the warrior caste. Ransa out of the way, Kiran is unopposed. But wait…the chieftain convinces Dileep to contest in place of his dead room-mate. The rather unconvinced Dileep contests alright, and also wins leaving Kiran seething. The drama begins then. Under the able guidance of her brother, Kiran seduces Dileep who falls in love with her and ignores his duties as general-secretary of the student’s union. Castigated by his leader, Dileep returns to find his place taken by his lady love who is now bitter with him for having impregnated her. Dileep is lost and unable to digest the events as they unfold while Kiran goes ahead with her political ambitions, this time trying to get the big fish—Duki Bana himself. Having realized that he is more of use than Dileep, she dumps the young man. Heartbroken, Dileep shoots Duki Bana dead only to realize that it was Kiran who nailed him. The film ends in a hail of bullets. Everyone except Kiran succumb.
But the soul of the film is the eccentric bard, Prithvi Bana, played by a brilliant Piyush Mishra. His dual contribution to the film in the form of excellent, stomach churning lyrics and a performance to boot take it to another level altogether.
Gulaal is set against a backdrop of the dusty expanse of modern-day Rajasthan, in a fictional, ostensible town called Rajpur (pun on Jaipur intended) which houses the university. While the student body remains in the foreground throughout the film, depicting everything from brutal ragging, even of a young female lecturer, the actual protagonists of the drama are its mass of diverse characters. There is the fiery, venom-spewing Duki Bana, played efficiently by Kay Kay Menon, the archetype of the small town chieftain who has his finger on the political nerve centre of the local university, a man surrounded by guns and coveted by the attractive nautch girl, the true blue bahubali of Indian politics, the aggrieved descendent of a royal who craves the death of democracy as a concept and as a rule and aims to raise an army of young Rajputs who can avenge their present-day helplessness in the face of the loss of their royal rights; the young, bespectacled student Dileep Singh who arrives in the heat and dust of Rajpur to study law but is sucked into the dirty underbelly of deceit, murder, love and lust; Dileep’s room-mate and friend, Rananjay Singh, an older, debauched student of the university who is also the son of the local maharaja but prefers to let his lineage lie low; the maharaja’s illegitimate son, Karan who remains on the sidelines of the plot only to reveal himself in the most important of places in the narrative and his sister Kiran, an ambitious, young student who strums the guitar when not conspiring to engineer the fall of the reigning student union. These sundry characters played by Raj Singh Chaudhary, Abhimanyu Singh, Aditya Shrivastava, and Ayesha Mohan are crucial to the narrative.
Kashyap’s film is a gritty portrayal of power politics. While there is the tavern turned living quarters bordering the railway line, home to Dileep and Rananjay on the one hand, there is the den of debauchery, called laka on the other. Enveloping all of it in its vice-grip is the grinding but façade of one-upmanship and that golden rule of real politik—the zero-sum game; power corrupts, yet it is coveted by one and all. That is the thrust of Gulaal. And that is what the film is about. It pits bigotry against legitimacy and power against humanity. The result is a classy political drama with the scenario in the present polity making it even more interesting. Student politics and elections are used by Duki Bana to fuel his own ambition of creating an MNS-style army of Rajputana warriors whom he addresses with aplomb, each one of those present have their faces coloured red with Gulaal. He convinces Rananjay Singh or Ransa to avenge those who ragged him and his friend in the hostel room, to contest against Kiran who is shattered when she ultimately loses the election to Dileep. In the meantime, Ransa has been killed by his half-brother Karan and his bullet-riddled, gulaal splattered body is hung from the post in the middle of the busy city centre to cock a snook at who else, but Duki Bana. Reason? Karan wants the tag of senapati, the leader of the Rajput clan, the ‘legitimate’ leader of the warrior caste. Ransa out of the way, Kiran is unopposed. But wait…the chieftain convinces Dileep to contest in place of his dead room-mate. The rather unconvinced Dileep contests alright, and also wins leaving Kiran seething. The drama begins then. Under the able guidance of her brother, Kiran seduces Dileep who falls in love with her and ignores his duties as general-secretary of the student’s union. Castigated by his leader, Dileep returns to find his place taken by his lady love who is now bitter with him for having impregnated her. Dileep is lost and unable to digest the events as they unfold while Kiran goes ahead with her political ambitions, this time trying to get the big fish—Duki Bana himself. Having realized that he is more of use than Dileep, she dumps the young man. Heartbroken, Dileep shoots Duki Bana dead only to realize that it was Kiran who nailed him. The film ends in a hail of bullets. Everyone except Kiran succumb.
But the soul of the film is the eccentric bard, Prithvi Bana, played by a brilliant Piyush Mishra. His dual contribution to the film in the form of excellent, stomach churning lyrics and a performance to boot take it to another level altogether.
Gulaal: the colour of politics
It’s been long, really long since I watched a film that appealed to not only the senses but also to the intellect. Last weekend was spent viewing two fine pieces of cinema. While one was a taut, Kafkaesque take on the politics of hinterland India, the other documented the fears of characters set in various strata of the boomtown of Gujarat—Ahmedabad a month after the bloodbath of 2002. Let me first talk about the first. Stark, dark, and dismal, the desolate landscape of mofussil
Gulaal is set against a backdrop of the dusty expanse of modern-day Rajasthan, in a fictional, ostensible town called Rajpur (pun on Jaipur intended) which houses the local university. While the student body remains in the foreground throughout the film, depicting everything from brutal ragging, even of a young female lecturer, the actual protagonists of the drama are its mass of diverse characters. There is the fiery, venom-spewing Duki Bana, played efficiently by Kay Kay Menon, the archetype of the small town chieftain who has his finger on the political nerve centre of the university, a man surrounded by guns and coveted by the attractive nautch girl, the true blue bahubali of Indian politics, the aggrieved descendent of a royal who craves the death of democracy as a concept and as a rule and aims to raise an army of young Rajputs who can avenge their present-day helplessness in the face of the loss of their royal rights; the young, bespectacled student Dileep Singh, another Rajput who arrives in the heat and dust of Rajpur to study law but is sucked into the dirty underbelly of politics, deceit, murder, love and lust; Dileep’s room-mate and friend, Rananjay Singh, an older student of the university who is also the son of the local maharaja but prefers to let his lineage lie low; the maharaja’s illegitimate son, Karan who remains on the sidelines of the plot only to reveal himself in the most important of places in the narrative and his sister Kiran, an ambitious, young student who strums the guitar when not conspiring to engineer the fall of the reigning student union. These sundry characters played by Raj Singh Chaudhary, Abhimanyu Singh, Aditya Shrivastava, and Ayesha Mohan are crucial to the narrative.
Kashyap’s film is a gritty portrayal of power politics. While there is the tavern turned living quarters bordering the railway line, home to Dileep and Rananjay on the one hand, there is the den of debauchery, called laka on the other. Enveloping all of it in its vice-grip is the grinding façade of one-upmanship and that golden rule of real politik—the zero-sum game; power corrupts, yet it is coveted by one and all. That is the thrust of Gulaal. And that is what the film is about. It pits bigotry against legitimacy and power against humanity. The result is a classy political drama with the scenario in the present polity making it even more interesting. Student politics and elections are used by Duki Bana to fuel his own ambition of creating an MNS-style regional army of Rajputana warriors whom he addresses with aplomb, each one of those present have their faces coloured red with gulaal. He convinces Rananjay Singh or Ransa to avenge those who ragged him and his friend in the hostel room, to contest against Kiran who is shattered when she ultimately loses the election to Dileep. In the meantime, Ransa has been killed by his half-brother Karan and his bullet-riddled, gulaal splattered body is hung from the post in the middle of the busy city centre to cock a snook at who else, but Duki Bana. Reason? Karan wants the tag of senapati for himself, the leader of the Rajput clan, the ‘legitimate’ vanguard of the warrior caste. Ransa out of the way, Kiran is unopposed. But wait…the chieftain convinces Dileep to contest in place of his dead room-mate. The rather unconvinced Dileep contests alright, and also wins, leaving Kiran seething. The drama begins then. Under the able guidance of her brother, Kiran seduces Dileep who falls in love with her and ignores his duties as general-secretary of the student’s union. Castigated by his leader, Dileep returns to find his place taken by his lady love who is now bitter with him for having impregnated her. Dileep is lost and unable to digest the events as they unfold while Kiran goes ahead with her political ambitions, this time trying to get the big fish—Duki Bana himself. Having realized that he is more of use than Dileep, she dumps the young man. Heartbroken, Dileep shoots Duki Bana dead only to realize that it was Kiran who nailed him. The film ends in a hail of bullets. Everyone except Kiran succumb.
But the soul of the film is the eccentric bard, Prithvi Bana, played by a brilliant Piyush Mishra. His dual contribution to the film in the form of excellent, stomach churning lyrics and a performance to boot take it to another level altogether.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)