I have been to the theatre only 16 times in my life, and when I went to see that movie, I was 22, and on number 11. I had been incredibly austere back then, and the four years of literal asceticism during Engineering had still not worn off. I knew no one was going to make movies the kind I had begun to love. There wasn’t a Bandini coming anytime soon, no melody that would wrench my heart out of its four-walled chamber like Gulzar’s first, virgin verses. And of course when I went to see this movie, I had not expected that. And of course it was not quite anything like that. And that’s the reason I am still searching for an answer -how I had already surrendered myself to a movie, even before the first frame revealed itself. How the carefully accumulated logic of 4 years dissipated in the air as soon as the ethereal and yet absolutely earthy notes of ‘Mor Bani Thangat Kare’ hit my ears. 

I still remember 2013 rather vividly. A bunch of trainees going for Race 2. Songs from Aashiqui 2 playing on loop everywhere. ’Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani’, ’Chennai Express’, ‘Krissh 3’ and ‘Dhoom 3’- all these being watched by everyone I knew. And me, just another ordinary Assistant System Engineer – Trainee, waving my nose in the air, dismissing everything with my ‘holier-than-thou’ attitude, someone in whose presence a housemate would switch from ‘f***’ to ‘fish!’. And then the same woman put to such a trance that she sat through the crude language, the rather raunchy numbers, and plentiful violence – how do you explain any of that?  And I just did not sit through it, I loved every still, every fragment of sound, every hue. I did not relate to any of it; I do not understand love of that kind that happens with a swift glance and then overpowers reason and erodes identity. And yet I was watching with nothing but love and wonder; not for the actors or even the story, but the experience. In love, yet not quite. I think there was a lot of joy, and not just when it was obviously happening. Nothing about the movie felt sad to me, not even when Ram and Leela died. It would have been easy to say that it was just the entertainment of it, but boldness and raunchiness had not been my type, and I doubt if at 22 I was having a coming of age with this unrealistic movie. And therefore this movie is the only movie with which I struggle so much. The more I try to rationalize, the more I sink deeper. I have issues with it and yet I love it with a magnitude that it almost hurts. But rationalization aside, there is so much more that evokes a hundred questions in me, not just as a viewer but also as an ordinary engineer who wants to write. For example, I wonder how much it is the vision of the director and how much is what the viewer wants to see. Yes, we all see the gorgeousness, the aesthetics, the synchronized- perfect choreography, the electrifying chemistry, the drama, the large scale, the seductiveness that never becomes vulgar (even if the dialogues do) – and come back having enjoyed an expansive, exotic feast. Yes, the director with his canvas of unabashed, unbridled riot of colour, emotion and action never claims to make an overtly artsy statement.


An ‘Ang laga de re’ even with the purifying swirl of smoke rising from the Dhuni is still a sensuous song and does not claim the same space as ‘Aaj Sajan Mohe Ang laga lo’ from Pyaasa. -But is that all that we are meant to see? What starts from pure lust, pure visceral action finds its way to virah, with the temple bells chiming in background as ‘Laal ishq’ starts ,  to the devotion as Leela touches Ram’s feet in ‘Nagada sang dhol baje’, and becomes the dissolution of self and the final sacrifice – one comes full circle with the spiritual journey of a human being. We have to go through all these stages – lust, anger, longing, separation, devotion, sacrifice, duty if we want the final union – the salvation. Asceticism is of no value if one did not attain it overcoming the pangs of passion and desire. It is perhaps delving deeper than what is necessary or even intended, and I must admit I have my days when dancing to one of the many iconic tracks is just -dance; and fun. But then I have days when I sit, ponder and wonder. And it becomes personal too; as I discard manuscript after manuscript of complete and semi-complete novels, largely criticizing what I have written and sometimes because I wonder if someone will even understand it. I really want to know how one maintains the purity of one’s thought while not letting one’s work dissolve unread, unseen. – In my case it is still easy because I have the luxury of tearing apart every word I once chose with great care for it is just my time and maybe a part of my life that is lost in the process, but when one has real-world constraints to translate a dream to celluloid, it is not the same. And I wonder how much care must have been taken to have hundreds, maybe thousands of actors perform in tandem, having the props at the right place; even the precisely suspended haze rising from the dhuni – while preserving the emotion for which all these form the backdrop.

So many questions. But I think this is how it is meant to be—an out and out commercial for those who like it that way, and something ancient, mystical for those who seek… a little more.