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at 11:46:35 pm on October 1, 2006
by Tagore Almeida
I often wonder if a human will ever be allowed to pass this journey thru life, retaining as much goodness that they would like to retain. It’s sad, but we see our children grow, we give them the best environment that we can (well most do), and then we expose them to the world, be it school, play groups, social events etc, and this is where we feel that their characteristics change. They get influenced by the world around them. What shocks me though, is that at the end of the day they come back home – which I would like to believe, is their haven. Add to that the good foundation that we have inoculated into them. So what happens then? Why do our children sometimes get involved in extreme fanatics, terrorism or even plain jealousy?
Reel Life – I recently re-watched Gulzar Saab’s Maachis. At the end of the entire film, I felt hollow inside. Why did the system fail so miserably that it raped the innocence of Pali (Kripal Singh). Here was your average youth, routed beautifully into his culture, his home and rightly so into the world of his loved ones. He was nothing short of a young boy, in a grown-up man’s body. He along with his best friend Jassy, lived a carefree life and yet worked for and loved their dear ones. One fine day, some cop comes by and takes Jassi away. Their little world is shattered and even more when Jassi finally turns up weeks later, all bruised. Pali doesn’t accept this, and here I believe is where this deep bond of friendship and love amongst people surfaces. Something that it hard to find in a city, but very much is alive in the innocence of a village. Pali is so disturbed emotionally that he sets out to do something about it, not knowing really what it is. Here is where, he gets into the claws of a man, who in today’s world is someone one could bump into at every street corner. Shame, coz this man is someone who uses patriotism to fuel the business of war. These people have no emotions; it’s about the kill – for money. Pali gets sucked into this world, along with another 3 youth and they get into it believing that they are doing it not for the money, not for any other reason, but because they need to get back at the system. Then there was Veerandra, who is the love interest of Pali, and she comes on board this little group as the target specialist. Why did she do it? Well her world collapsed too, her brother Jassi was arrested again and in desperation killed himself in prison. She actually goes to training school to become target specialist. She lands up in the same group as Pali and finally they get betrayed by their commander in chief. In fact all the youth die, and finally Pali and Veerandra kill themselves as the final exit from a world they don’t belong into, and in my opinion a world that they should have never been into.
Real Life – The film made me sad, because of how real it is. As I stated in the beginning of this article, how can such things happen? Who takes our innocent children and lets them get into such outfits? Society? Politics? OR do you actually believe that this is an acceptable change that we as humans are ready to accept? Don’t get me wrong this is NOT a political statement. On a human level, what about retaining the essence of God’s creation? I would hate to see my kids, the kids of my friends ever get exposed to this sort of stuff. The system needs to fixed by the people, thru the government, but we end up serving the politicians instead!!!! Can you imagine that young innocent girl, evolves from being the hard working village damsel to someone who is ready to kill!!!!! What has happened to mankind? What has happened to life? I pray and I wish we all did, not just for peace in the world, but for protection of our children, so that they do not get influenced by such things. Also there is a line in there “The Country is not self-sufficient, the people are”. It’s so true, when our bellies are full, we forget that the rest of the world might be starving, and we stop relating to that. Again, on a humanity level, we can’t turn a blind eye to the world around us. We have to give…really…as much as we can, and not as much as we feel like giving at that moment.
Cinematically – Punjab looks beautiful, her fields make you want to give up this high rise buildings that we live in and embrace her womb in freedom to be able to laugh the way Pali and Jassi do. The acting is topnotch, the direction even better and the cinematography amazing. I wish there were not that many songs specially when you have a bunch of youth, being trained to kill. The last thing they would be able to do is break into a song and dance. I wish there were more directors like Mr. Gulzar, who intelligently handled this film, and the emotions merely complimented the intelligence. Unlike a lot of young directors right now who feel that if you make your audience cry, you’ve made a GREAT film.
Tagore is a IT professional, peace seeker and scriptwriter, based out of Dubai. He is constantly seeking to remind mankind to share the goodness that he believes we all carry. He writes, cooks and does whatever he can to persuade those around him in the powers of love, goodness, peace and faith. He runs a peace group called The Uncultured Company (www.theunculturedcompany.com)
